


Party Favors

by ourladyofmanycats



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe, Angst, Big Sister Bobbi Morse, Bobbi Morse & Jemma Simmons Friendship, Christmas, Drunk Jemma Simmons, F/M, Holidays, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by Music, Jemma Simmons Has No Chill, Jemma Simmons-centric, Jemma is a hot mess, Probably will get sexual at some point, Recovery, References to Arctic Monkeys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-05-17 22:18:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 58,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14840213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ourladyofmanycats/pseuds/ourladyofmanycats
Summary: In an alternate universe, Jemma Simmons "absolutely does not have her shit together." She is behind on her bills, full of liquor, and one of the best scientific minds of her time.That may or may not change when she meets handsome stranger Leo Fitz in the bar where she spends her time away from the office. Maybe the meeting is life-changing. Maybe Fitz is just a one night stand with the bluest eyes Jemma's ever seen.(Partially inspired by the music of Arctic Monkeys.)





	1. Party Favors

**Author's Note:**

> Hi folks. It's important to note here that there are some triggers in this series, most notably the abuse of alcohol. 
> 
> Tell me your favorite Arctic Monkeys song in the comments or play "spot the reference" if you're a fan, too! ;)

She really hated bloody marys. They were just cheaper than mimosas most of the time. That was probably because they tasted like something that you’d spit up after a bad night out. It hadn’t been a bad night out, but somehow, for someone so “put-together” as her lab supervisor liked to joke, or encourage with what passed for motivation when squinting, she could never seem to pull herself together on Thursdays. Clear answer: stop going on on Wednesdays, but she still ended up here every week.

 

Jemma ended up in the cafe for lunch most days, somewhere quiet to interpret literature rather than hear the clinking of small tubes of glass and the trill of fingers against keyboards. The biology lab was beautiful and clean and particularly advanced, but it was also loud. Even when it was quiet.

 

The grid-marked book in front on the table of her swirled and bent in impossible ways. She hated the way it looked when it did that--her hands would shake when she strung together the parts of formulas. Her drawings would look like they had been produced in high wind or earthquakes. She should stop going out Wednesdays. Her phone chimed the end of lunch hour and it was time to stand up and get her things and head back to the office.

 

The walk back from the cafe was quick and chilly and she slung her bag across her shoulder on the way out, shoving things in there on the way out and dropping everything for the hundredth time that week. _Not bad_ , she whispered to herself, noting that at least her books had made it back in there.

 

Her cell phone, on the other hand, had suffered a casualty. She shook her head at the cracked screen and began her journey over again.

 

“Jemma, you left this,” Bobbi said without looking up from her own cell phone and while dangling Jemma’s keys.

 

“Thanks,” Jemma replied without surprise.

 

“Coming back from Baxter’s?” Bobbi asked, matching up to Jemma’s footsteps.

 

Jemma nodded. “Not unlike a hurricane, it seems.”

 

Bobbi laughed. “Looking over your notes from yesterday on the listserv last minute before we get into this meeting.”

 

“Uh-huh.”

 

“Noticed that you’re onto something and I am certainly _not_ _surprised_.” Bobbi shoved her hands in her pocket. “Why didn’t you talk to us about it?” She stopped on the sidewalk.

 

Jemma grimaced. “Didn’t I?”

 

“No,” Her mouth twirked, “you didn’t.”

 

“Fuck.” She cursed under her breath.

 

“Yeah, you’re going to be presenting this one all on your own. I mean--the email was clear and wonderfully written, but our team hasn’t talked about this at all and we don’t operate that way. Frankly, I’m surprised Coulson hasn’t strung you up by your ears already.”

 

“This is punishment, isn’t it?” Jemma groaned and started back, trying desperately not to stomp.

 

“Also, there’s a rip in your pants.”

 

“What?”

 

Bobbi pointed at the exposed portion of Jemma’s underwear. “Yeah, right there.”

 

Deep breathing didn’t work for Jemma, but even if it had, she still wouldn’t have thought to do it. Right under her belt, a horizontal rip ran from her hip to the middle of her back. “How didn’t I catch that?”

 

“I wondered myself. Last Tuesday.”

 

Jemma could feel herself go pale. “Tuesday? Why didn’t you tell me?” She struggled with her faded green sweater, trying to cover at least part of the fashion offense.

 

Bobbi pursed her lips. “I had a question that I knew you wouldn’t answer. How many times will Jemma wear the same pair of black jeans that almost look like slacks in the next week? Answer: at least three. Can’t confirm because I didn’t see you over the weekend.”

 

Jemma didn’t say anything, but she did point her face directly at the building they were fast approaching.

 

“I’m just…” she stopped. A look of formulation caught her for a minute before she continued. “You can’t keep this up.”

 

Jemma sighed. And so it was this same conversation again. She’d tried playing stupid, agreeing to change, and also...well, lying. “I’m not--”

 

Bobbi stopped her with the power of one look. “Stop. Don’t fight me, okay, just listen. I have known you for so long.”

 

“Uh-huh” Jemma hurried on. They went through the door of the building and headed to the elevator.

 

“Jemma, you can’t do this forever. We both know better.”

 

She didn’t answer, but pushed the button to the left of the elevator and they waited in silence.

 

“And you reek of vodka,” Bobbi finished as the doors closed.

* * *

 

 

“This is a technology that simply must be embraced now--by an organization such as this with the resources and the valuable minds that ours employs.” Jemma looked through the room, a crowd much bigger than she had expected and bigger than her supervisor had told her. It didn’t make her nervous. The awful bloody mary had helped with that.

 

She took a second and waited. “Any questions?” It was genuine, really, no matter how it sounded.

 

No one said anything.

 

“Okay, I’ll stay after for anyone who wants to discuss,” she smiled and watched people turn to each other. It didn’t seem promising. Bobbi sat in her seat in the front row and tried to give her a look of confidence.

 

“That could have gone better, huh?” the lab supervisor said, walking painfully slowly to the podium where Jemma was waiting.

 

She gazed into the floor, thankful that the presentation hall did not have a microphone. “Notes?” She asked.

 

Coulson crossed his arms. “The idea is a fantastic one for certain. Maybe you just needed to, you know, talk it out with someone before hand. You can do better than this, Jemma.”

 

She tried to smile and hoped that it looked sincere. No one seemed to be able to mind their own business today. “Consider the lesson learned. Hear that, Bobbi?”

 

She was already standing by the two of them, her things packed. “Heading back to bio,” she said, waving her hand in Coulson’s direction.

 

He turned to give Jemma a look. Deep lines crossed his forehead. It was a go-to expression for him, but even so, she saw it much too often. There was no way she was getting out of this one unscathed.

 

“How long did you work on this one?” He asked, gesturing to the screen that everyone had been stuck on just a little bit prior. She had scraped it together in the blink of an eye and had still been working on it when the audience all filed in, to be true, and it was good enough--but she knew it wasn’t good.

 

Jemma bit her lip. “Couple of minutes.”

 

“It shows.”

 

“Oh, Don’t say that.” she said, sounding too close to a beggar.

 

“It does. We could have helped you with it. Your paper was good.” He referred to the email that she’s posted on the listserv. From his reference to it and the size of the crowds, at least she could verify that people were reading her papers.

 

She turned away and shut down her laptop. “Well, I was up all night working on that.” In a fit, when a draft of cool air bounced off the auditorium walls and hit her, she scrambled again to cover her hip. Dispose of all the evidence piece by piece.

 

“This could be a great initiative. Something good for a whole lot of people. The only caveat is that we’re all going to have to devote a lot of time to this one.” He said, pointedly. “But I think the big guy is probably going to want to talk to me about this and probably set up a team with the neuropsych department and some people from tech. How does that sound to you?”

 

“Oh, fine.” She could feel her own ears prick up, but tried to contain her excitement at the thought of beginning a new project. The research aspect of the job was fantastic, but putting her hands on something new was even better. Jemma liked working, after all, and aside from going out, that was really the only other thing she did anymore.

 

“We’ll have to meet about it.” He admitted. “I need to get more of an idea about the inner workings of your plan before he gets ahold of me. No surprises.”

 

She looked at the clock by the entrance. Most people would have already started heading home by then. “Want to talk now?”

 

Coulson shook his head and arranged his files. “First thing in the morning. I have plans I’m late for.”

 

“Alright, the morning, then.” She tried to mask her disappointment, but suddenly wondered if any of this pretending was working at all.

 

He gave her a small wave and then turned to leave without looking back.

 

Jemma sat in the presentation hall for a while after everyone had filed out. Either her delivery had been that good or not a single person at the company had had any interest in the topic at all. She took a deep breath and then sat on the edge of the stage until her hands stopped shaking, and she took out her notebook and began to draw the blueprints.

* * *

 

Baxter’s closed at 4:00, which was about the same time that The Ostrich opened on Front street. It was a quick shift from lunch to dinner time, but Jemma was never really hungry anymore. They had drinks, though, and music, and that tinny ring of foreign people chatting with one another. The thunking sound of a cue ball clubbing against velvet.  

 

It was better than home.

 

She took the notebook with her when she left the office, one of the last people in a building where everyone stayed late. As it got later, the office became colder until she realized that it was time to head back.

 

The Ostrich was closer to her apartment than it was to the office, a long 15 minutes in which Jemma became overly obsessed with the thought of plopping down on the first available park bench and continuing her work. The sweetest kind of escapism, but it was cold outside as well, and The Ostrich became sultry in the night. Jemma just wanted to warm her toes.

 

Just an hour or so, she promised herself, trying to think of the concern on Bobbi’s face. It wasn’t her fault; she really did just care for Jemma’s wellbeing.

 

She poured into the bar, where people were stringing in two or three at a time and then leaving, but the corner booth was open almost always. It was the one closest to the heating. She took her seat and removed her green sweater, piled it into the seat beside her.

 

A waitress dropped a glass of whiskey on the table without a word, used now to the routine and the generous tips.

 

“Thanks,” she said without looking up. Her part of the routine as well. She took out the book for the countless time that day and went back to it, leaned over far enough to swallow the whole set up. She sketched a neuron, imagined the way that she would need to present the project to Coulson, breaking it down far enough that he could explain it to Fury himself. After a few minutes, she took the whiskey and downed it in one gulp.

 

“Just a glass,” someone said in a hushed voice.

 

“Yeah, but with what in it?” The waitress asked, her voice firm. She was growing more irritated by the minute.

 

Jemma didn’t look up, but she did find herself listening.

 

“An empty one.” the hushed person said, growing louder.

 

From her peripherals, Jemma could see the man holding his arms out in frustration.

 

“I just want a glass,” he insisted, “with nothing in it.”

 

“You’re in a bar; we don’t do that here. You can order a drink or you can leave.”

 

“You’ve got to be kidding me. Here’s a dollar,” he said tersely. He slapped his hand against the sticky bar. “Let me borrow the glass.”

 

“No,” the waitress replied, equally as terse. A force to be reckoned with, but a good person to have on your side, and she was on Jemma’s side.

 

The man was petulant. He hunched over the bar. “I’m not leaving until you fill this very very simple request.”

 

A distraction. She looked up from the brain and the shaky lines that she was trying to render on the paper for Coulson.

 

Jemma wasn’t sure what the man expected; this was New York. Everyone expected someone’s ulterior motive. “He’ll have what I’m having,” Jemma said loud enough to be heard over the noise of the other people. She crossed to the bar, her drained glass in hand.

 

“Listen,” the man began, two fingers pinching the bridge of his nose.

 

“I’ve got this,” she whispered, standing closer to the bar. She snuck the man her empty glass when her waitress turned back to the shelf. “Don’t be a child,” she told him. “I was all empty.”

 

“Your tab?” The woman asked.

 

“My tab,” Jemma repeated to the waitress with a wink. She took the whiskey, poured a little taller than others, and strolled back to her booth and to her work, which she had begun labelling, by memory, with medical precision.

 

“Is that Ardbeg? Did she pour you that?” The man huffed, only low enough for Jemma to hear. A stiff finger was pointed at the waitress, who had already moved onto something else.

 

“I doubt it,” she admitted, now aware of why the man, who was unquestionably scottish, had felt the need to follow her to the corner booth by the sweltering heater. She took a sip of the drink and hid her smile behind the glass. “And if it is, they've most likely watered it down.”

 

It was an old private joke, one that she made to herself the first time someone had told her that she was on the highway to alcoholism. She only bought so many drinks because three whiskeys from The Ostrich equalled the alcohol content of one at home.

 

“I suppose they, eh, do happen to have the nice liquors at the bar for women who look like you.” He said matter-of-factly as he fished a flask out of the inside pocket of his coat and began to pour with his back turned to the other patrons.

 

Jemma tried not to laugh. The audacity of someone to bring his own liquor into a bar so he could pour it into their glass. She looked again to the blue notebook, convinced he would take off after he was finished pouring so she could return to her important work which was now without distraction.

 

“That’s a spot-on diagram,” he said quietly, having settled. He took a seat across from her. “Are you a neurologist?” The man looked up at her and she was caught there, frozen in time.

 

His eyes were the same blue as his shirt. The same blue as her chemistry notebook.

 

“I-I...Jemma Simmons, biochem,” she stuttered, but held out her shaking hand for him to grasp.

 

“Leo Fitz; engineering.” He said.

 


	2. Fire Escape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jemma tries to control her chill, and regrettably does not succeed. First time for everything, but not in this AU.

When she awoke the morning after, Jemma found herself single-shoed on the fire escape covered in dew and absolutely goddamn freezing. How she could have slept there all night without waking was a mystery. She climbed back through the window into her bedroom and checked the time.

 

Jemma was early. She felt the relief warm her through to her half-covered toes and she took off straight away toward the bathroom for a warm shower, which she decided would be followed by an ibuprofen and the biggest glass of water she’d had in days.

 

There was a noise in the living room, and she stopped in her tracks before remembering the man from the bar. She wasn’t sure how he’d gotten there, but knew for a fact that she hadn’t slept with him because who in the whole wide world would leave a girl stranded outside in mid-november? Certainly not the same person raising cain about renting a glass in stingy and cheap bar.

 

Jemma peeked around the corner in the hallway, careful to avoid the squeaky wooden floorboards closest to the adjoining wall. A suitcase, closed, scuffed, and brown lay discreetly under the coffee table, and the man was assuredly asleep with his face turned into the throw pillows. Her purple flowered lap blanket covered him only halfway, from his toes to his tail, and the rest of him, which was visible from her hiding space, had collapsed into a lump. She wondered if he should have a coffee or if he had already planned on leaving but hadn’t been mindful of the time. Glancing at the clock again, she wasn’t sure if it was she who was being unreasonable.

 

She wasn’t sure if she should wake him. She didn’t know why he was there--well, obviously she had invited him--but she didn’t know why. Hadn’t he other places to go? Hotel rooms to rent?

 

Jemma decided to head back to the shower and go about the day as she had planned, and once she was ready to go into work, she would simply wake the man up and send him on his way.

 

 It was settled. she locked the bathroom door, turned on the light, and started the faucet. She still took her time, soaped her hair twice and combed through it slowly with conditioner. Breathed in the smell of her own soap deeply, trying not to think about Leo Fitz at all because she could barely remember anything about him. It’s not like she would need to know either because he would be heading out shortly off to whatever flight was taking him...back to Scotland? She wondered, but caught herself.

 

No need thinking about it.

 

The shower was much longer than usual. She could skip toast this morning. Just head into the office straight away once she was ready.

 

She slipped on her robe and eyed the sofa one last time on her way back to her bedroom, only now the living room was empty and the suitcase was gone.

* * *

 

 

She got to the office before Coulson did, and waited for him while she sketched in her notebook. In her head, she recited the lesson that she planned to give him when he arrived. She didn’t want to call the technology a microchip, and besides, she could see that the night previous, she had been onto something because the word was absolutely scratched out. 

 

She sighed. Why hadn’t she had written a replacement word?

 

“You’re early,” the supervisor said when he walked in and sat his things down.

 

She looked up, “Of course I am.”

 

Coulson smiled, not the type to openly laugh. Not the type to have _ever_ been seen laughing. “Your truancy is something I never have to worry about, Jemma.” He took his seat at the desk, and Jemma plopped her plans on the table.

 

“First,” she said, “Tell me what you can see.”

 

He studied the drawings and flipped through a couple of pages. “I’m seeing brain cells and what looks like an electronic stimulator. Looks pretty easy to understand to me.”

 

“Excellent. And this is where it gets complicated.” She turned to her most recent page. “This is not a brain cell, Phil. This stimulator just looks like one.”

 

 He met her eyes. This had been what the presentation was about. She couldn’t tell if she had come across as patronizing or helpful. Jemma pointed at the long myelin sheath.

 

“Depending on where we install this device, it is my intention that we could lessen the effects of multiple sclerosis by changing this specific cell.”

 

She pointed at another diagram, this time a neurotransmitter. “In the brain, we could inhibit the overproduction of dopamine, ideally treating people with schizophrenia without having to try again and again to match medications to symptomology.”

 

Lastly, to emphasize diversity rather than to go over the total affect of the technology, she considered one last example. There was nothing to point to this time. She didn’t want to turn to the last page, which contained her drawing of a nervous system in its entirety--or at least what she could fit on the page. “When implanted in the spinal column of a patient, I intend to use it to treat a number of disorders such as neuropathy, paralysis, or with time, it could be honed into a powerful tool to use for the treatment of alzheimer’s disease.”

 

 Coulson sat back in his chair and considered. His eyes seemed tired, she noticed. They drooped under the weight of his eyebrows.

 

 “Do you have...questions?” She asked.

 

“Not right now.”

 

“I’ll be in the lab if you think of some.” She started to gather her things.

 

“You’re a brilliant scientist, Jemma.” He said. “I like this; it’s not normally what we do here.” Coulson gestured to the walls of his office, memorials of fallen heroes memorialized in photos framed against the hard white cinderblock chamber.

 

Jemma stood with her bag slung over her shoulder and fastened securely. “I know this is out of our element,” she admitted, “I felt this coming and couldn’t stop it.” She wasn’t sure she wanted to, but she didn’t say that outloud.

 

“I think I know what you mean.”

 

She turned to go, but he caught her before she could make it out of the door.

 

“Glad to see you changed those pants. I don’t ever want to see them in this lab again.”

* * *

 

“How did it go?” Bobbi asked from her desk as soon as Jemma crossed into their shared workspace.

 

She put down all of her things before answering, still unsure if she was mad about her ignorance of yesterday’s fashion faux pas. “Great. I think.”

 

Bobbi smiled widely and turned back to the pipette in her hand. She had that look on her face--the one that insinuated that she knew more than Jemma did.

 

She made a point not to engage. As she made her was across the room, her eyes glued to her holotable, which was covered in someone’s things. “Who the bloody hell left all of this here?!” All at once, she was enraged. “This is not a desk--this is a piece of sophisticated lab equipment that ought not be touched at all let alone covered in heavy books!” She tossed her bag on the counter, the very sturdy and inexpensive counter, and glared at the room.

 

No one answered.

 

“Bobbi!” she demanded.

 

“Don’t look at me.” She shrugged.

 

Jemma scanned the room once more, looking pointedly at the rest of her lab-mates for an explanation. When no one said anything, she set off to removing the textbooks from her workspace.

 

“Oh no,” someone squeaked, running over to move the rest of the things herself. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know that was your space. Fury dropped me off here this morning and it was the only space that wasn’t covered in pictures and personal things, and I thought it was empty. I’m sorry.” She carried her library in her arms and dropped all of her books into a heap on the empty portion of counter.

 

Jemma was relieved, but only for a moment. “This is a full lab. You said Fury assigned you here?” She could feel the color rinse from her face. She gripped the corner of the beloved holotable and tried not to hit the floor. She was certainly fired, then, and no one had bothered to tell her.

 

“Just for the new project,” the woman explained, pushing a lock of brown hair out of her eye. “I’m still getting settled in, meeting everyone.” She didn’t smile, though.

 

Jemma studied her.

 

“I’m, uh, I’m Daisy,” she said, shoving her hands in her pockets. “I’m in the intelligence department. I was assigned here for the Prometheus Op.” Daisy looked over at Bobbi “Is this Simmons?” She whispered, but not low enough.

 

“I’m right here.”

 

 “Yes,” Bobbi answered. “She’s a little agitated today; not your fault.”

 

“Good to know,” Daisy mouthed.

 

Simmons pursed her lips. She already needed a break. “I need you to tell me what this Prometheus Operation is.”

 

Daisy cocked a sideways grin. “Your Op--the one with the tech for neurological illness and injury.”

 

The world crashed onto Jemma’s shoulders all at once. She could almost hear angels serenading in the background. Her team? Her operation? “O-Oh.”

 

Bobbi stood and removed her orange safety glasses. “Congrats, Jemma,” her smile was sincere. “Didn’t Coulson talk to you about it this morning?”

 

“No.”

 

“Oh, well, Davis and Michaels are already moving into the auxiliary lab right now.” She explained. “A couple more people are coming in this afternoon.”

 

Jemma couldn’t gather why Coulson would need her to explain the science to him if he wasn’t really planning on having a conference with the big guy. She was stopped in her tracks. “Who else?” She asked in the effort not to seem like she was completely out of this picture.

 

“May from psych,” Daisy said, re-arranging her things in the now-empty area where Michaels usually worked. Beside her, he silently packed his things in a cardboard box. “Some other people, but I don’t have too many details on that myself.”

 

Jemma bit her lip, but caught herself and stopped before anyone else could see. “Okay, well, it’s nice to meet you.” She redirected to Daisy. “Glad to be working with you.”

 

“Same here,” Daisy said as she shook her hand. In the same breath, she removed a hula dancer figurine from her bag and stuck it to the counter. “And don’t worry. I won’t touch the holotable any more.” She smirked.

 

Jemma turned her face to hide the red blush that had bloomed on her cheeks.

* * *

 

 

She headed to dinner after work, a break in routine as a reward for the good news she’d heard. It was what her father would want her to do. Were she thoughtful at all, Jemma knew she would call her him and tell him all about it, but she didn’t. The light of the sun was turning orange and dusky brown in the sky, matching the leaves of the small trees that lined the sidewalk on the street near the office. She held her breath when she walked, her hands balled up in the long sleeves of her sweater. It always felt like she was running when she was between work and home. Her heart was always pounding.

 

“I bet I know you,” someone said as he matched her pace, appearing seemingly from nowhere. “Funny to see you out in the daytime.”

 

A cold chill ran through her spine as she met eyes with the man who had been sleeping on her sofa just that morning. “Mr. Fitz,” she said in what was almost a greeting.

 

He didn’t correct her incorrect honorific.

 

“Almost not the daytime anymore, is it?” She asked. Her pace didn’t slow. Around them, things changed gracefully into a dusky gray.

 

“I like your sweater,” he complimented, following her as she moved onward.

 

She muttered a quick thanks, too nervous to look him in the face. Without the ability to stop, she could feel her neck trying to burrow further into her shoulder blades.

 

“I was heading out for dinner, and I saw you and you’re really the only person in New York that I know right now.” He led.

 

“Am I?” she could think only of the blue of his eyes and she tried desperately to avoid them.

 

His hand grazed her elbow, and Jemma’s brain warbeled. “Would you go with me?” He asked. They stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, flanked by several people. “I don’t like to eat alone.”

 

“Okay,” she conceded. “Somewhere that serves whiskey, then.”

* * *

 

 

Jemma picked at her food, her fork turned over, and on her third glass of alcohol. “What are you in town for?” she asked after a while. She was trying, really, to not be a bore.

 

He sat down his drink and swallowed hard before answering. “Work,” he said curtly. “I try not to talk about it too much. People don’t tend to like to hear.”

 

“Well enough, then,” she said, leaning back in her chair. In the light, the man in front of her looked much like a puppy. The kind that you brought into bed in the middle of the night to keep warm, not the kind that kept chewing on your shoes. “Once you get me started, it’s hard for me to stop.”

 

“I know,” he said with a grin that made her redden. She thought to herself that he must remember the things that she didn’t from the previous night.

 

They ate in silence, and she continued to pick at her food, each bite smaller and smaller than the last. She wasn’t used to eating with others and not of eating full meals at all. She liked having crackers from the box at lunch time.

 

She took a deep breath before speaking again. “I know that you stayed at my flat last night.”

 

“Right,” he said while he spread butter on the face of a roll.

 

“But I honestly don’t remember yesterday at all, only meeting you at The Ostrich and your row with the waitress.” She said quickly without looking up from her plate.

 

“Oh,” he said, his voice surprised. “It got late and you told me that I could stay. I already had my suitcase and all.” He wiped briefly at his nose, a signal, Jemma knew, of moving onward in the conversation. “Not much else, nothing skeevy, you know.” And then he paused for a while and his nose wrinkled. “You don’t think something awful of me, do you?” Leo Fitz was the picture of a puppy fidgeting with his napkin.

 

“No-no, just admitting.” She said, working diligently on sounding “normal”.

 

“Okay,” he said. He put the napkin back in his lap. “I’ll pay for dinner. A way of saying thank you.” He started again on his food.

 

So that brought up more questions for Jemma, “You could have told me in the morning before you left.” She crossed her arms on the table, now done with her plate.

 

“I get nervous,” he said. He wouldn’t meet her gaze. “Left my number on the kitchen counter, though. Just saw you by accident while heading out for supper.”

 

“Left your number?” She said, far more suspiciously than she’d meant to.

 

“Yes, I liked you.” he cleared his throat. “Still like you, really.”

 

She leaned forward and took the rest of her drink. Her head began to swim, and she couldn’t tell if the redness in her hands was from the whiskey or what was assuredly the beginning of a crush. “You can come home with me, if you want.”

 


	3. Blue Salvia

As quickly as he had appeared before dinner, Fitz had gone again the next morning. A slippery man. There was no sign of him except for the brown suitcase that he had left slightly ajar on the top of her dresser. It was an obvious sign that he planned on returning, but where he had gone was a mystery.

 

Jemma lay in bed, warm and dry now, but not early at all and this time and without a monstrous hangover. She had no explanation for that. Maybe she’d made a sacrifice to someone in the night. She swept her hair off of her face and examined the alarm clock and thought about running off where she was meant to be in the next hour. She knew she should and that she wanted to, but she was also sure that Bobbi would know something had happened the moment she saw her and she would be correct.

 

When she finally convinced herself to get up, she headed for the bathroom to get washed up and there, under the porcelain basin of the sink, found a sock that most certainly did not belong to her and must have snuck away from its mate.

 

The whole time Jemma spent with her toast in the oven, crouched down to watch it brown, she could only think of the night before and the small ache between her legs that reminded her what she had done.

 

Her head flashed to visions of that man’s head thrown back, forehead wrinkled and eyes shut tight. She remembered the feel of his hand in hers, steady and warmer than a sunbeam, The feeling of his beard buzzing against the tender line of her collarbone. She couldn’t remember if he’d made a sound, but maybe he’d whispered something in her ear. A cold chill strolled lazily through her spine and she could feel the hair on her lower back stand at attention.

 

The toast burned. Jemma went in, hands pinched to pull out the piece of ruined bread, which was steaming. Staring straight at it, how hadn’t she stopped herself? She threw it into the bin and winced at the sound of melting plastic.

 

She argued with herself about locking the door and remembered in a huff that he’d told her he left his number on the counter in the kitchen and she found it, plugged it into the contacts list of her phone, and texted him that she was locking the door and if he needed his things, to please let her know.

 

Promptly, on stepping out into the hall, her bag spilled again.

 

“Hey, let me help,” Bobbi said, coming up the last flight of stairs. She was dressed so neatly that Jemma was certain she looked like a dried up dandelion in comparison.

 

“Here to get me, are you?”

 

“Yeah, of course,” Bobbi smiled. She sat her own bag down and reached for everything that had hit the floor. “Told you I would, remember?”

 

“No,” Jemma said apologetically. She was thinking about the bag, she promised herself, she was not thinking about the handsome man who had effectively moved in.

 

Bobbi raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t get my text, did you?”

 

Jemma shook her head, “No, sorry, or maybe I did and I just didn’t recall. Not that I would complain about a companion for the walk in.” She smiled as best she could. Her head and heart were racing.

 

“You look concerned. Not thinking about that new girl in the lab, are you? Don’t spend too much time on that.” She smiled that assuring smile that had become so character of her. For some reason, she was always looking forward to something, moving somewhere, setting records. It was a wonder that Bobbi had ever wanted to walk Jemma anywhere, or at least that's what she thought.

 

Jemma didn’t answer. Bobbi was also a master lie-catcher.

 

“Hmm, maybe not.” She said. Jemma felt like she had held the magnifying glass to herself on purpose and the sun was beaming down on her.

 

“Not worried,” she replied.

 

They walked mostly in silence, just together for the company. It hadn’t always been that way, but things had changed months ago, and not just with Bobbi. Before Will left...There had been a time when talking with anyone was electric. When science was magic instead of escapist. She missed that. Despite throwing herself into her work, Jemma Simmons’s mind never stopped jumping from one thing to something else. She couldn’t remember the quiet.

 

But the slow-motion silent film took her again. Fitz flat on his back and the arc of his furrowed brow. She was underwater. The side of Jemma’s face tingled, almost as though the curl of his hair was brushing against her earlobe once more. She could feel, she swore, the palm of his hand on the back of her calf, the heel of her foot. Her eyelids ached. She wanted to close them, to drown for a moment.

 

“You could try imagining her in her underwear,” Bobbi advised under no particular urging.

 

“What?” Jemma said, a bit too loudly. They were almost to the office. Around them, people fell in line, bringing with them the noise of cell phones chiming and the luxurious smell of home-brewed coffee with too much cream.

 

“The new girl. She’s good, though, just a little inexperienced. I took her to lunch yesterday--you should have come with us.”

 

Jemma shook her head, “I didn’t have lunch yesterday.”

 

“Today, you could, if you wanted.” Bobbi removed her badge from her bag and swiped them into the building. “Pretend you have friends for a little while?” her chuckle was low, but good-natured.

 

“Hm,” She looked away.

 

“Okay, well, you tell me when you decide,” she said.

 

“Sure thing,” Jemma said, convinced that she wouldn’t follow through.

* * *

 

Jemma stared at Fitz’s text message, something small: a single sentence, but she didn’t answer. He was absolutely benign, just asking to borrow the key for a moment, but the thought of seeing him again, in this lab, in the sacred place where she thought in algorithms and formulas was horrifying. There was a reason it was said that one should never mix business and pleasure.

 

She turned the phone off, and leaned back over her keyboard.

 

“Hey, listen,” Daisy said, coming from her workstation to lean against Jemma’s counter. “I’m sorry that I was in your space yesterday.”

 

Jemma looked up from her work, which was still quiet and solitary. This woman could have been a pin popping a balloon. “All’s forgiven,” Jemma said, curtly. She did, after all, need someone with a background in info tech. No sense in burning bridges.

 

“I don’t know about that.” She turned to face the rest of the room, everyone engrossed in their own work. “I talked to Bobbi, and she explained a lot of things to me, you know, about how things have been for you lately and how important all this is to you. I get it.” Her voice was heavy.

 

Jemma met her eyes, quite deliberately. “Are you just saying that? Because I’ve heard that a lot.”

 

“I bet you have.” Daisy had a knowing expression that Jemma could not confirm as practiced or sincere, her forehead scrunched purposely, looking at Jemma over her eyebrows. “You should come with us to lunch.”

 

“Maybe,” she said, pulling on a pair of gloves.

 

Daisy stood straight and strode across the room to her space, which was decorated already and busy with color. “If you change your mind, let me know.” She smiled.

* * *

 

 

Jemma was on her first drink at The Ostrich when Fitz found her.

 

“I had a feeling you might be here. I was hoping you were, really. I have a lot of things in that suitcase.” He smiled, showing all his teeth. He leaned forward on his arms to read the title on her textbook.

 

“Sorry,” she winced hard before palming her face to hide an intense red blush. “I forgot to answer, I really did.”

 

He pressed the side of his thumb against her cheek, but despite her best efforts, she jumped.

 

“Don’t worry about it. I found you after all.” He said. He was tired, she could tell. There was something in the corner of his eyes that she had seen before, and if she hadn’t been so tired herself, she could probably place it.

 

“I-I apologize, though.”

 

“Have you eaten?”

 

Jemma shook her head. No, of course not. “Not hungry,” she answered before a grumble in her stomach gave her away.

 

“Let me walk you home. I could get you something. A slice of pizza?” He said, mentioning the truck that lived on the corner near her flat.

 

She wasn’t sure why that agitated her. “No, I’ll stay,” she said as she fished her keys out of her bag, “but you can take these--borrow them, I mean.” Even if he decided to rob her blind, the only thing he’d make out with would be a bunch of books she could re-order through work and a half-empty bottle of shampoo. Maybe a can-opener.

 

Fitz made a face. “You’re turning down free pizza? You talk a tough game for a woman who only has beer and sriracha in her refrigerator.”

 

“Look,” she barked and pulled back startled from her own voice. “I’m not...you don’t need to do...this whole thing.” She gestured at nothing in particular.

 

Fitz leaned into the worn back of the booth and crossed his hands in his lap. “Okay,” he said.

 

“What?”

 

“I can see that you’re reading something into this. Maybe you aren’t used to this.” He said, picking words very carefully. He didn’t meet her eyes. “I’ll be clear that this isn’t me trying to invade your space--”

 

She couldn’t hear him. She was tasting him instead. Jemma remembered stale hops and cream, and the feeling of his hand on her behind and her thigh, gripping these parts of her body tightly. Fitz reminded her of yellow roses. He hadn’t seemed the type to say yes to fucking a stranger, but he hadn’t shied away from the grip Jemma wrapped around his neck in the heat of the moment.

 

The small of her back was sweating profusely. “I know,” she admitted.

 

Fitz pursed his lips. “You’re strong and independent, I get it. You don’t want me digging around or trying to find your heart or...you’ve been living here, of all places.”

 

“In New York.”

 

“In The Ostrich.” He answered.

 

She bit her tongue. “Yes, well.” That slapped her.

 

“It’s just like I said, you’re the only person who I know in this whole city. After last night and dinner, I thought,” He took the keys and let out a deep sigh. “It’s fine. I’ll return with these directly.” His voice was laced with concern.

 

She stared down into her book again, noting what was incorrect with red pen in the margins. She might write the author later and tell them how to correct the next edition.

 

The first minute after Fitz had left was predictably uncomfortable, and Jemma looked around at the patrons in the bar, all making noise with one another and laughing, but she couldn’t hear them. Yet another moment on the outside.

 

The second minute was long. She watched the darkness through the window on the far wall of The Ostrich. Steam licked at the corner of the still, working its way toward the center like the goal was to obscure the view of the sidewalk and trees and more laughing people completely. Jemma felt almost grateful.

 

It was maybe a third minute before she took off toward her flat after him.

 

She couldn’t see Fitz anymore, but she didn’t speed up. She stopped at the door and thought about rapping herself in the head at her foolishness. But then she went in. It took a minute and a half to make it to her door and open it.

 

Fitz stood in the kitchen, folding up what must have been the rest of his clothing, the items that had been thrown on the floor at some point the night prior. “Almost gone, I promise.”

 

She dropped her bag softly beside her long-neglected coatrack, where Fitz’s coat was waiting for his departure back into the night. Without the ability to stop herself, she reached out and touched the sleeve, considering the worn and soft fabric between her fingers. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

 

“What are--” he stopped like a deer in headlights. His brain appeared to be bouncing in his skull.

 

“I’m sorry,” Jemma said. “I get...the word isn’t touchy or irritable.” She crossed from the door to the other side of the kitchen. Her floorboard creaked under her boot,the noise piercing the thick air between the two.

 

“Maybe the word is sensitive?” He offered, studying his things, possibly trying to strike the last half hour from his head.

 

She knew that she had been cold. She knew that she hadn’t truly been warm for a long time. There was a fire escape in this metaphor.

 

He latched his suitcase closed. “I get it.” He cleared his throat. “It’s fine.”

 

Jemma closed the space between them, wondering how this had been the second time that someone mentioned understanding her fears without explicitly acknowledging what they were. “You don’t _get it._ ” she said with what resembled a laugh. “And I’m sorry to do this whole drag-you-in and force-you-out shenanigan. It’s not my intention.”

 

Fitz shrugged. “Maybe this is just what it’s like here. I’ll have to get used to this.”

 

Jemma shook her head. “No. I can’t explain it, but I don’t feel like you should leave.” She gripped his elbow, intensely focused on not shaking.

 

“Why?” His eyes softened. He’d probably made up his mind about the cold impression New York was rumored to leave on visitors.

 

Jemma pushed onto the tips of her toes to kiss him, felt the back of his neck and pulled him in deeper. She remembered this, the soft feeling of his mouth and the smell of soap.

 

He pulled away gently. “No, I don’t--I don’t think that you are fully aware of yourself and it would be a hideous thing for me to take advantage of that.” Slowly, he removed each of Jemma’s hands.

 

Jemma couldn’t mask the hurt that filled her chest and touched at her chin. She covered it his her hand. It wasn’t shaking, she promised herself. “I’m not drunk, Fitz.”

 

“I know that,” he said, taking his suitcase in hand. “That’s not what I meant.” He headed for the door.

 

“Maybe just dinner, then?” She offered desperately.

  
  



	4. Just a Kitten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you gave me notes recently--THANK YOU! <3 I am a little ahead in relation to my writing/posting schedule, but I haven't forgotten your ideas and I want to incorporate them in future chapters. You folks help keep the writing fun.

Jemma woke, this time, to the sound of Bobbi pounding on the door of the bathroom. She pulled herself off of the once-fluffy-but-now-flattened rug, which was covered in something she’d rather not guess at. Her mouth tasted like the peel of a banana.

 

“Are you in there?” Bobbi was shouting.

 

“Yeah, yeah I’m in here,” Jemma answered and hobbled on her hands and knees to the door, which she then unlocked.

 

“You have to be fucking kidding me!” Bobbi said, too loudly, before dropping down to her knees, eye-level with Jemma. From there, the real look of concern was unmistakable. She was nowhere close to tears--no, it was fury. She pulled Jemma into a tight hug.

 

The smell of sandalwood in Bobbi’s perfume was overwhelming. Jemma pried herself out of her grip and headed back to the toilet, which welcomed her once more. When she finished, Jemma wiped her chin and sat back to lean against the side of the tub. “Please don’t say anything.”

 

“Jemma,” Bobbi began, eyes wide. “This is not a good look for you. Really, it’s not.” She grabbed a washcloth from the linen closet and wet it in the sink.

 

“I get it. I know.” Jemma snapped.

 

Bobbi squatted down and dabbed at Jemma’s cheeks. The washcloth was warm and comforting. “Did something happen?” She asked. She was rolling up the sleeves of her favorite gray shirt.

 

“You’re preparing for an entire day of care-taking, aren’t you?” Jemma said, giving in to the soft touch.

 

Bobbi looked at her sternly--certainly on purpose. “I have never seen you like this before. You are a kitten with a bad habit, not a woman with a deathwish.”

 

“It’s Saturday?”

 

“Yes,” Bobbi answered, taking her bag from her shoulder. “And lucky, that, because your alarm has been going off for god knows how long. I turned it off just before I found you in here.”

 

“What time?”

 

“Half-past ten.”

 

“Not too bad,” Jemma said, holding that now-chilled washcloth to her forehead.

 

Bobbi sighed. “Are you done with that?” She pointed to the toilet.

 

“I think so,” Jemma said, moving onto her feet to start standing up. She could feel the room tilt, and thankfully Bobbi noticed and reached for her arm to steady her.

 

“Okay,” she said, “bed or couch? Your choice. Not that you’ve made very many good ones lately.”

 

“Oh, piss off.”

 

Bobbi smirked.

 

Slowly, Jemma made her way to the bedroom, which was thankfully dark as sin from the blackening curtains she’d bought online weeks ago. As gently as she could move herself, she lay down, and Bobbi, much to her dismay, flicked on the string of lights that framed the bed.

  
“You never answered my question, Jemma. Did something happen?” Bobbi tucked the worn quilt around Jemma and then began reaching for the things strewn on the floor. One by one, she picked up old sticky beer bottles, clothes that had not been washed in the past month, and scribbled on sheets of paper. “I’ll keep these for you,” she mentioned when she saw those.

 

Jemma pressed her cheek against her pillow and closed her eyes. “Nothing...abnormal.” She had struggled to settle on the right word.

 

“Whose are these?” She asked, lifting a pair of men’s slacks off of her bedroom chair. It was a question in passing. Bobbi was not one to judge her for finding a stranger's articles of clothing hanging around.

 

“Why did you come by?” Jemma asked, groaning. She needed a pain reliever or five. Maybe a gallon of water and an energy drink.

 

Bobbi tossed some bottles into the garbage can and the loud clink made Jemma jump. “Call it intuition.”

 

“You don’t have to come take care of me.”

 

“Come to yoga with me tomorrow?”

 

Jemma groaned. “Not a snowball’s chance in hell.”

 

“The reason I have to take care of you, you kitten,” Bobbi said, “is because you refuse to take care of yourself. She reached for the infamous pair of black jeans and tossed them, too, in the garbage.

 

Jemma didn’t say anything to her. She was well aware that she couldn’t argue with a statement like that.

 

Bobbi took a seat on the chair that she had cleaned off. “I’m surprised that you didn’t replace all that furniture by now. Your books would look better on a shelf than piled on the floor in the corner of your living room.”

 

“I don’t have the money for that.”

 

“Nonsense. I know how much you make--and I think I can speculate with a fair amount of accuracy on where it goes. We could...go to a yard sale? Ikea?”

 

“It’s not--”

 

“I haven’t been inside your apartment in months. I come in now and I can see that you are stewing in it. Can’t imagine what that man who left his slacks here was thinking.” No, she wouldn't judge Jemma for the events leading to the missing trousers, but she might blame the trousers-wearer for spending his time with her.

 

“He was a slag,” Jemma lied.

 

Bobbi chuckled, just once. “I have an old shelf I no longer need because _I replaced it_ ,” she said pointedly, “with something new a while back. I’ll bring it over, take up some of the space that Will left.”

 

Jemma sighed. She no longer mourned his loss in the open, and especially not with Bobbi. It felt like it had been so long ago, but there were small things, once innocent, that were weightier than ever before. She hated opening the windows. The breeze reminded her of the trail of his fingers down her spine. She despised that.

 

“I don’t think about the open space.”

 

“Of course not. Or the little crumbs of food that are waiting under the kitchen cabinets, or the past due bill that I saw on your counter in there.”

 

How embarrassing. She wondered if Fitz had seen it when he was in there, too. “You remember everything that you see.”

 

“It’s a curse,” Bobbi said.

 

Jemma worked on settling down into her pillow. “I’m going to bed.”

 

“I’ll be back this afternoon.” 

* * *

 

 

She wasn’t sure how it had happened, but Jemma had managed to convince Fitz to come to her flat for dinner. She did remember promising to cook and wishing that she hadn’t remembered at the last possible second because there was barely anything in the house and Bobbi had cleaned up and organized so many things while she had been sleeping, but refused to go groceries shopping with her citing her disdain for watching Jemma buy anything from the back left corner of the store.

 

Fair enough. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much else in the way of home-cooking for them to eat.

 

She was working on threading her belt through the loops of her pants when he knocked on Jemma’s door and she steadied herself, took a deep breath, and let him in.

 

“Hi,” he greeted, dropping his work bag on the sofa. He smiled, more muted than the time before.

 

She felt her cheeks turn red. “Hi, welcome back. It’s been a while.”

 

“Only a couple of days. I do see that you have a new bookshelf.” he said.

 

“Thank god for Bobbi,” Jemma laughed.

 

“Bobby?”

 

“No-no, my friend Bobbi. It was a gift from her.” Jemma scrambled to find a feminine pronoun. How quickly could she get it into the sentence? “She helped me, as well, with tidying up around here. I’m not sure how you could stand it before.”

 

Fitz paced, just a little, around the room, and took a look up the hallway.

 

Behind him, Jemma went back into the kitchen. “Thank you for coming. I regret to say that I don’t have much for dinner. I didn’t know for sure if you’d come through.”

 

“I always keep my word.” He was wringing his hands.

 

“No, I don’t doubt that, I mean…” She stopped. “We’ll have to go out to get something for me to cook.”

 

Fitz nodded. “Yeah, that’s fine. I’m up for a walk anyway. I’ve been in the office all day.”

 

Jemma put on her coat and debated grabbing his hand. It was too early for that, but the thought was too familiar. “The supermarket is just a few blocks away. Are you in the mood for anything in particular?”

 

“I just like food,” he laughed. He walked alongside her with his hands in his pockets. “I’m sorry,” he said, suddenly.

 

She hoped that he wasn’t about to take off. Besides, that briefcase had been left in her place and he still didn’t have a key. “What?”

 

“I want to apologize for the snarkiness earlier. I’m just a curmudgeon. I like you, and I was embarrassed that you didn’t seem to want to reciprocate.” He was running his hand down the back of his neck.

 

“Well,” she started.

 

“I know that you cleaned that apartment. Or you and Bobbi did. And I think that counts for something. And your wanting to have dinner with me is also telling.” He was distinctly pleading.

 

Jemma felt like a rapid game of Pong was playing between her ears.

 

“And before I get too whatever it is that I get, I’ll admit here openly, that I read your last two papers while I was having lunch today, and I think you’re brilliant.” He flushed.

 

Jemma flushed, too. “Oh, I--thank you.” It was not news to her, but she didn’t expect to hear it.

 

“I just googled your name.” Fitz defended. "I knew from talking to you that there was more than meets the eye. Lo and behold, you are one of the cleverest people in the world."

 

She had to wait until he was done, which was just five or six more nervous sentences later. “I’m going to make you a sandwich.” She pulled him by the arm into the deli section of the store.

 

“Do you want a bottle of wine?” He asked.

 

“No, I don’t think I should.” Jemma answered with a lie. She did, very much, think she should.

* * *

 

The two sat on the floor in the living room on the rug that luckily Bobbi had vacuumed earlier in the day. Jemma couldn’t help but thank the woman in her head over and over as the night progressed. It wasn’t until Bobbi had moved the entire contents of the living room into the hallway that Jemma realized exactly how empty her apartment had been. Her walls, she remembered, were a light gray shade that she had never managed to brighten when she and Will moved in there together. The challenge had turned into a match of impossibilities once he had gone.

 

It might have taken a thousand light bulbs and an orange traffic cone in the middle of the floor to pick up the mopey feeling. But it fit her now. Sometimes the most out-of-place things are so strange because they are harbingers of what's to come.

 

Between the two of them, their game of Pollyanna was more than half-way through.

 

“What do you miss the most about Scotland?” She asked, moving her pawn four spaces forward.

 

“I don’t know if I should answer that,” he admitted.

 

“You aren’t going to say it’s the girls, are you?” She asked. She took a long drink of her water.

 

He looked up and moved his own pawn, creating a blockade just before her home base. “It’s my mum.”

 

“Would she like it here? Have you moved here finally?”

 

He nodded. “It was too good an opportunity to pass up. The States are fine, I suppose. It'll still take some getting used to. I think you’re the first girl I’ve met here who hasn’t started to swoon as soon as I opened my mouth.”

 

“Because I’m British,” she said, passing her dice. She couldn’t go until he moved his pawns to make room for her.

 

He smirked, and Jemma could see the tip of one of his ears turn red with heat. “No, you’re something else entirely.”

 

Jemma couldn’t answer that. Was it a compliment or a jab? “What does that mean?”

 

“You’re a genius, I know, and tough. Gorgeous, and dynamite in the sack,” he said, unable to hide that grin. “Maybe a bit of a hot mess, as they say.”

 

She still could not tell the implication. “I’m fine tonight.” Jemma said defensively.

 

“More than fine. Is this who you are on the regular nine to five?”

 

“More of a curmudgeon myself then. Lately.”

 

“Why’s that?” He asked, rolling the dice.

 

“The same old usual.” She answered, careful not to let too much out. Careful to keep things vague enough that he couldn't piece things together. She could have used something stiffer to break the tension.

 

“Do you take men home from bars very often?”

 

She hesitated to respond because she was unsure of how her answer would color her.

 

Fitz looked up at her. “You don’t have to tell me.”

 

“I know. I don’t sleep with men very often anymore. I don’t know what made things any different with you.”

 

He fidgeted and finally moved his pieces before giving Jemma the dice again.

 

Jemma watched him move his weight from one side to the other, staring right through the floor. He was unsettled by something, but she couldn’t tell what it had been. The effort she had gone to, for sure. Maybe. “Do you? Do things like that?” She asked and leaned back on the heel of her hand trying to look as soft as he did. How did men manage it? That look of iron covered in lamb’s wool? And how did the women around her burn and melt like mercury?

 

Fitz brought his hand so quickly up to his rose-colored ear that she wondered if she’d accidentally spat on it. “I used to. I haven’t in a long time.”

 

She bit the inside of her cheek. “Maybe there’s something special about me too.”

 

“Likely that.”

 

Jemma took her turn as slowly as she could and felt the scorch of his eyes studying her. She’d picked the first thing out of the dryer to wear and thought it would be adequate. No one had been there to steer her in another direction. The thought occurred to her that perhaps she should have planned more carefully: truly the story of her life. Her long arm leaned over to the far end of the board and moved her pawn just a couple of spaces.

 

Fitz cleared his throat. “Thank you for cooking for me.”

 

“Hardly cooking, assembling more like.” The sandwich had been quick and unimpressive compared to the things she knew she could do if her body didn't feel exhausted. She felt a tremor in her foot when she pulled it underneath herself.

 

“Still.”

 

“Are you going to go to bed with me tonight?” She asked.

 

He smirked. “Is that an invitation?”

 

She contemplated. Was it? Or was it a question that she needed answered so she could decide whether to fall asleep on the floor or the bed? Her arms were so heavy, but when she looked at the clock it was still so early. She grimaced. “I’m tired.”

 

His smile fell, but he squirmed to hide it in vain. Jemma saw it before her brain could even interpret the image.

 

“It’s fine. I had a good time.” He stood up cautiously, dusted himself off, and helped her off the floor.

 

The touch of his hand against her waist made her heart thump once, heavy enough to make her blink in confusion. She snuck her fingers under the collar of his shirt, touching his neck just as softly. “Maybe another time?” She whispered in earnest.

 

His teeth peeked out from his open mouth. “Yeah, sure.”


	5. Gemini

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll just apologize now for what I do at the end of this chapter. My bad.

There were days that Jemma spent morning to night in the lab. It was the only place that she wanted to be sometimes, more than her parents’ house, more than the pool on a hot summer day. She wanted the sharp smell of antiseptic and latex, something better than baking bread had ever been, even when she was a child and she _cared_ about the smell of baking bread. The previous October, she had managed to get away with spending an entire night there before Coulson came in early in the morning, caught her, and threatened her for not going home and getting “actual rest.”

 

She still came in early, this time in the clean clothes Bobbi had made her launder over the weekend. A sweet-smelling sweater, deep red, and her gray work pants.

 

On the way in, before the sun had risen, she walked with purpose, her feet feeling heavy, but real, in her boots. The holidays were unfortunately approaching. She would be expected to phone her parents and do that whole routine in which she pretended that everything had only ever been okay.

 

She shook it out of her head and made a point to think back on work. She rose before the rest of the team, but was not always there before them, and this time, she removed her coat and hung it in her locker, thankful for the quiet. She was alone this time.

 

Until he spoke.

 

“Dr. Simmons,” he said, deeply, in the way that he greeted people. “You’re an early bird, they tell me. I thought I’d find you in here.”

 

“No where else, Director Fury.” She said, trying to smile, but crestfallen that she had not truly been as alone as she had planned.

 

“Heard about your project. I like it.” He complimented.

 

She nodded. “Thank you, sir.”

 

“Heard some other things, too.” He squinted his one eye. “You alright?”

 

“Of course,” she said.

 

Nick nodded too. As he canvassed the room, the sound of his heavy black boots thudded a familiar sound from earlier in the day. “Just dedicated then?” He spoke, carefully.

 

“Oh, yes,” Jemma answered.

 

“Coulson puts a lot of trust in you, but I can tell that he’s worried.”

 

“Mr. Coulson is a good man.”

 

“We’re here when you need us, Dr. Simmons. The value of a sharp mind like yours, and the pleasure we take as an organization in borrowing it, that’s something that we can afford to sustain.”

 

Jemma’s temples pounded. She wanted to launch into the usual how-could-you, but didn’t want to argue. Things had come all the way to Fury, then? Her anger grew in her hands, burning hot, and she balled them into fists, trying to focus on the feeling of her fingernails against her palms.

 

Fury stopped and turned at her silence. “Good project, though. I can think of a lot of people who would benefit from a device like this.”

 

Jemma bit her tongue until she could find the appropriate response. “Thank you, sir,” she said, just as carefully. There was a thunderstorm in her throat. Jemma Simmons was tired of people telling her how intelligent she was.

* * *

 

 

She had lunch alone in the locker room, a cup of grapes from the vending machine. She ate deliberately, thinking purposely of neither Fitz nor Coulson nor Bobbi nor her mum and dad.

 

Is this what she did before, she wondered. Pieces of herself had gotten dropped somewhere along the way and she couldn’t recall where they’d gone or how they looked. There must have been a time when she wanted something and really had the presence of mind to work for it. She could put together puzzles, she knew. But there was nothing benevolent in that. The process was not infused with the purpose to make things better. Just to solve the riddles. She studied her own shaking hands, grasping at the smallest grape from the bottom of her cup. These hands weren’t hers...were they?

 

Her temples stopped throbbing after a while, cured from just getting a break from the noise of people. This was something else, entirely, the feeling of her own noise which was violent and glittering behind her eyes.

 

She finished that last grape and headed back into the lab.

 

Bobbi sat, her eyebrows set in concentration as she did calculations over her computer. She was unaware of others in this space and jumped when Jemma spoke.

 

“Bobbi, I’m seeing a man, by the way.” She said the words quickly because she knew that if she was calculated, this thought would never see the light of day.

 

“A-A man, like, romantically?” Bobbi asked as one eyebrow softened and dropped.

 

Jemma nodded. “He’s very nice.” She said. There was a time, she remembered, that she would have gone on and on about him, describing to her the curve of his jawline and the blue of his eyes, the sandy stubble on his chin. That didn’t seem right anymore.

 

Bobbi pointed, and leaned over her desk to whisper, “is that the man who left his pants?”

 

Jemma stopped and considered not answering. “Yes,” she spoke, even to her own surprise. She was floating over this body in the deep red sweater; she was a marionette pulling another doll’s strings in an infinite loop.

 

“What’s his name?” Bobbi asked with the hint of a smile pulling at her mouth.

 

“Leo,” Jemma said. It felt foreign in her mouth. Was she even whole? An entire human being? Could she ever be as whole as the word that was his name?

 

“Simmons,” Bobbi said, standing. “Are you okay? You look pale.” She reached out her hand, something strong and sure, and grabbed Jemma’s arm.”Do you need a minute? Something to eat?”

 

Jemma shook her head. No, she was thirsty. “I feel a bit poorly. I think I should go home to bed.” She said, realizing all at once how the room seemed to spin...and her ankles...what a shame it would be to fall flat on her face.

* * *

 

When she finally arrived home, Jemma sat on the barstool in her kitchen in the quiet, and poured from a bottle that was almost empty. She had done it: finally left work for something so stupid/foolish/childlike as a drink in the middle of the day. She bit her lip so hard the skin broke with an elastic pop and she tasted her own blood. The whole drink was gone in one gulp, and she moved on to the bottle of wine that she’d bought weeks ago and hadn’t wanted. It was the last thing in the house.

 

And then she called him.

 

Fitz arrived an hour later, confused once again, and quiet. He had a way of reflecting which she liked, the way his mouth hung open sometimes, just barely, ready for whatever words scuttled to him. “Alright?” he asked once he’d sat his things down. He rolled up his sleeves, left one first, and waited for Jemma to answer him.

 

“Not sure,” she answered, leaning her cheek against her hand.

 

He didn’t answer right away.

 

“I know that you left work to come here.” She said, quietly. She was slowed by her internal strings--her hands were a million miles away. “I told Bobbi about you.”

 

He turned to obscure his face. “You did?” He was neutral.

 

“Well, I told her that I was seeing a man.” She worked to keep the slurring from her voice, but the effort was futile.

 

He nodded, and turned back to her, tongue in cheek, with his hands on his hips. “So you’re pissed, then? Decided to give me a call and ask me over?”

 

Jemma shook her head, but she could only deny so much. “I called. I thought you might want a break.”

 

“Don’t do that,” he said quietly.

 

She looked at her feet, which were removed of shoes, and she wondered when she had taken them off. There was something ghastly about wearing shoes when drunk. Despite the angry look that had absconded with Fitz’s face, she reached out a toe and poked his shin.

 

“Jemma,” he started with what was almost a laugh. He wiped his hand over his mouth and then reached for her and pulled her against his chest in a loose embrace.

 

She cleared her throat. “Don’t do that--” she copied. “I didn’t, y’know, ask you here so that you’d take pity on me like _that_. I’m not a child.”

 

“Well--”

 

“Can’t you just sleep with me like any other man on the planet?” She asked, looking up into his eyes. They both knew that this was.

 

Fitz stood back, searched for the window, and Jemma wondered if she should just allow him to climb down the fire escape to go back to wherever…

 

“No, I’m not--Jemma, I’m not doing that.” He said, voice terse. “I shouldn’t have come here.” he whispered to himself.

 

She took the last of her drink. “What is it short for? Leo? Leonardo?”

 

“Leopold,” he answered, but he still stood stiff. He was the picture of strength as he said it and she wanted to laugh. It wasn’t his fault, not really.

 

“I’m a Virgo,” she said. She knew it was nonsense and couldn’t stop herself. Words were leaking out of her mouth. “Not that you asked.”

 

He met her eyes. “I think I should go.”

 

She sat up on the stool. She could call someone else. She still had Will’s number and she could ask him over and they could have a row and then he could leave. The usual. “The zenith of gentlemanliness, you.” She spat.

 

He took a step back. “Just because you’re hammered doesn’t mean that I--” he paused. “I like you, actually. I've told you that. I don’t want to be that person. Maybe you should just consider someone else.”

 

She cleared her burning throat. Jemma couldn’t place the frustration that pulled at her eyelids, but she could feel them brimming. “You,” she spoke louder, “are going to have to realize, then, that I am never not like this. If you like me--If you think that the girl you like is going to roll over sober and love you back, you’re absolutely mad.” She shook her head.

 

“You just fancied something quicker, then? On the pull and there I was.”

 

“Can’t you just sleep with me?” She said again.

 

“I’m not taking advantage of this depraved situation.”

 

Jemma got up and crossed to her cabinet and pulled out a clean glass. Without a word, she filled it with some of the wine that was left and wrapped his hand around it.

 

“Jemma,” he whispered.

 

“Drink it,” Jemma challenged.

 

Leo drowned the wine quickly and handed the glass back to her, and drank the next one when she asked, and the third, and the bottle was emptied.

 

“Is that it?” He asked. His chin was set, his voice firm.

 

“The last thing in the house.” She agreed, thinking of what may be hidden somewhere around, maybe in the back of the freezer. Truly, it was a surprising fact, and so was the fact that he'd taken the wine without hesitation. What did it mean?

 

Leo walked to his bag and pulled out a flask, which he drank in front of her without offering anything or breaking eye contact.

 

Jemma watched as the sun set behind him. It was early, she knew, but it became dark out in the blink of an eye. She was unsure what was going to happen next. She certainly hadn’t expected the extra flask, but maybe she should have, since he was the same man found arguing in The Ostrich. She reached for the lightswitch in the kitchen and swept her hand across the wall until she found it and flicked it on.

 

“I don’t need to be drunk to do this and mean it,” he said once he’d placed the empty flask back on the breakfast bar. “I wish you didn’t have to be.”

 

Jemma made her way toward him and put her hands on his waist. He was not a particularly muscled man, but Leo Fitz was sturdy and warm and soft. He stood straight, not even swaying under the weight of his liquor. She could imagine pressing her cheek between those shoulder blades.

 

She stopped and looked into his eyes, or straight through them, and pressed her body against his. “I know you don’t have to be,” she shook her head. A blind woman could have seen it. Jemma bit her lip. She had to be blind, at least for now.

 

He kissed her gently, one hand on the back of her neck and the other on her hip, pulling her firmly against him and the knot in his trousers. “Is this really what you want?” He whispered, his forehead pressed against hers.

 

“Yes,” she answered without hesitation. Jemma pulled the tucked shirt out from his pants and started on the buttons there, in the blue light of her kitchen.

 

But Fitz took her hands, and reached down for her legs, and in what was a very surprising move, sat her on the stool she had sat in before. “Here, like this?” He asked, stroking the length of her inner thigh through the leg of her work slacks. His mouth trailed to her ear and down the side of her neck, which had never before felt so long.

 

She pushed against him. She felt a familiar pressure between her legs and she wanted nothing more than to press it against him, there, bare. “Do you prefer somewhere else?” She asked insincerely. She had focused her attention to those buttons again, and then he stood there, his chest in the open. She didn’t remember this from the last time.  Her hand was pulled to the spot under his belly button, just barely obscured with the lightest, softest, and most beautiful brown color of hair.

 

“What are you--”

 

She pulled at his belt to still his question and looked into the kitchen floor. “Nothing,” she cut him off as quickly as she could and snaked her other hand behind his head to pull him down for another hard kiss. The feeling of his hips grinding against the inside of her thighs. Oh.

 

He made a noise in his throat, quiet as a mouse. She could scarcely hear him.

 

Jemma took this as a sign, and unhooked the belt, her smile heavy against his lips.  

 

“Stop, stop,” he whispered, “not yet.” He removed the belt and tossed it to the floor, where it fell with a jarring thunk.

 

Her reached, instead, for the sweater and pulled it over her head without needing to be asked. He sighed, something small and almost imperceptible as well.

 

“You needn’t be gentle,” Jemma said, with an almost scathing emphasis. He was looking at the freckle on her shoulder.

 

“You just,” he started, but didn’t finish. Instead, he pressed his fingers against her spine, and then thought better of that type of touch and grasped a handful of her hair.

 

“Ugh, yes, like that.” She groaned in return. A reward, she thought, and she reached for his cock, iron-hard and patiently waiting.

 

Jemma couldn’t squash the demanding urge to take those trousers off.  Her ears flashed scarlet red.

 

“Not here,” he repeated and let go of her long enough to take his shirt off the rest of the way.

 

She could feel the whine release from her mouth, and was unable to hold it back. “This isn't happening quick enough,” she argued. The truth of it was that she was done with this waiting--had been since he walked in expecting a completely different night.

 

“C’mon, Jemma,” he chided, but he reached down and pulled her weight onto him. Without flourish, he walked with her legs wrapped his waist into the living area, and set her gently back down on the ivory-colored rug on which they had played board games.

 

It was dark on that side of things. The stars couldn’t be seen through the light pollution of New York city, but her window was wide open. “Fitz,” she said from her place on her tits up on the floor, pointing at the curtain.

 

“No,” he denied, and he reached for the button of her pants, undid them, and wriggled them from out from under her.

 

She cursed. “I have neighbors,” she argued.

 

He bit the side of her neck, and even Jemma Simmons could construct no valid argument under that kind of duress.

 

Fitz made camp between her legs and pressed against the honeyed knickers that he didn’t take off. “You’ve worked so hard on convincing me. I might as well have a good time. Besides, you said not to be gentle.” He said.   

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Generally, I do not write sexual situations, so constructive criticism is wanted. Thanks!


	6. A Taste of Madness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally! Several questions answered.

Jemma was glad when Fitz left once they had finished. He had kissed her on the head after he got dressed and told her that she could call again, but next time would be for lunch. She lay on the floor still naked, watching the lights outside flicker from the movement of other people in their respective homes. There were days that she wanted the stars instead of those yellow and blue lights. Looking out and seeing splinters of outer space: that was what she missed most about England.

 

She didn’t keep cigarettes in the house, but she would have liked one. In the darkness of her apartment, with her body almost slick with sweat, she felt another type of invincible. Fitz was right about the window. It had been better with the curtains open.

 

Jemma rolled onto her back and looked at the ceiling. There was something harder about saying goodbye to someone in the morning.

* * *

 

“I’m glad to see you’re better,” Bobbi said, as soon as Jemma arrived to work a half hour later than usual, though no one said a word. She smiled at Jemma.

 

“Thank you, Bobbi,” Jemma said as she made her way to her station and turned on the computer. She found herself wondering. Jemma’s breakfast toast wasn’t sitting well, and it was something for Bobbi Morse not to notice. Maybe it was better that way; she didn’t dare say anything.

 

“Sometimes, all it takes is a good night’s sleep.”

 

Jemma turned at the voice and saw that Daisy was already halfway through a project and what looked like a tremendously large cup of coffee. She fought the urge to chide Daisy, and smiled at her, too. “You’re quite right.” Why on earth would she bring a beverage into the lab?

 

Bobbi pulled a chair up to Jemma’s work-station. “We have to talk about what happened yesterday when you were gone.”

 

Jemma’s heart hammered in her chest and theories about how and when they were going to sack her flashed through her head.

 

“Dr. May came in to talk with us about the neurocognition processor that you designed.” Bobbi said quickly. She stood up and crossed the room to Jemma’s side.

 

“Oh,” Jemma breathed deeply. “What did she think?” She asked eagerly, suddenly full of life at whatever challenge that the neuroscientist would have suggested for the project.

 

Daisy joined them with her coffee cup in hand, and hopped up on the counter to sit. “She loved it,” Daisy said.

 

“But she doesn’t think that she can pull this one off.” Bobbi finished for her.

 

“What? Nonsense!” She folded her arms over her storm-tossed stomach. Dr. May was the neuroscientist that she needed on the project. Jemma hadn’t even planned on a back up in case it didn’t work out. In fact, Coulson had suggested that he would assign her directly.

 

Daisy shrugged, “It’s not her thing, she said. She wants this to pass the testing stages, but she says that there is no way that she could ever pull together a microchip small enough and powerful enough to mimic natural electrical stimulation without destroying the neurons.”

 

It wasn’t an unrealistic fear, Jemma knew. It wouldn’t take too much to damage the cell, and if it did become damaged, there was no way to repair that bridge. It took a world of power to avoid slapping her own face. “Well, there is plenty of research that supports this type of program.”

 

“It’s not the program,” Daisy said, leaning back against the wall and squinting. “The program is fine.”

 

“She finished that,” Bobbi said, pointing to Daisy. There was a peculiar innocence to her face. Poutier lips than the normal Bobbi Morse wore on any other day.

 

Jemma smirked. “So what are you suggesting?” She asked. Of course Bobbi was planning something. Maybe something with more advanced or theoretical science? Delicious.

 

“The same thing as Coulson--and I know you haven’t checked your email yet--but he wants someone from the engineering department to give it a once-over. See what they can suggest for powering the chip.”

 

Daisy leaned forward and finished gulping the rest of her coffee. “Why can’t the brain’s natural electricity power the chip, though?”

 

“The current is meant to ignite things that can’t ignite themselves,” Jemma explained.

 

Daisy nodded. “Okay, so a good engineer is a must.”

 

“We need someone who specializes in Stark’s Tech.” Bobbi agreed. “Do you know anyone?” she asked with her voice dripping with intimation. She crossed one impossibly-long leg over the other and pointed her eyes at Jemma.

 

“Are you suggesting that I do?” She was glad she’d worn her hair down, or there would have been nothing to hide behind.

 

“I googled him.”

 

“Bobbi! You didn’t have nearly enough information to find him through a google search!” Jemma gasped.

 

“I helped,” Daisy said.

 

Jemma turned the color of grammar-correcting pens and ghastly papers after a professor had run through them, a lethal crimson red. “You told her?”

 

Bobbi leaned in close to Jemma, who was positively steaming. “Just the fact that you told me about someone--that’s fantastic. And of course, me being who I am, I had to do some digging.”

 

“You gave us his first name and of course we knew his location, and once we whittled down people who weren’t criminals or politicians, and so on and so forth, that was enough the come up with a short list.” Daisy wriggled around long enough to pull a wrinkled sheet of paper out of her back pocket.

 

“Add in the fact that Hunter mentioned to me that he was meeting up for drinks with a new engineer at his work who was named Leo…”

 

“And then another google search,” Daisy said with a quick-whip in her voice.

 

“And this guy’s a genius,” Bobbi finished, her finger on Leopold Fitz’s name smack in the middle of the list.

 

“It’s him, isn’t it?”  

 

“I can’t believe you,” Jemma said. It sounded like they had rehearsed this part, which meant they knew it was dicey and had plotted the reveal.

 

Bobbi sighed and met Daisy’s eyes before turning back to her. “After the stuff with Will, I’m not going to sit passively on the side and not smuggle my way into your life. I won’t do it. I should have never done it in the first place.”

 

They stopped bickering, and Jemma felt her blush lessen, though it did not disappear completely.

 

“Who’s Will?” Daisy asked with a lowly voice. Even she could sense the tension in the mention of that name.

 

Jemma debated telling her or not. She was a stranger after all, and she was supposed to be a neutral co-worker, but that _was_ concern that Jemma could see in Daisy’s eyes, and it didn’t look insincere. “He’s an old boyfriend. And he did something…” she wasn’t sure she could find the right word on the spot. It had been a lot of different adjectives. “Vile,” she settled.

 

That was enough to keep them all quiet for what was an uncomfortable amount of time.

 

“Listen, about Leo, I shouldn't have done that. But I did anyway, and really, I’d do it again.”

 

“He doesn’t work here.” Jemma said, and she turned to her computer to type in her password and put all this behind her.

 

“No, he doesn’t, but he could.” Bobbi said.

 

Jemma couldn’t hide the look of indignation from her face. “Are you suggesting that I bribe him into leaving the company that he moved to the United States for so that he could help me with this one project? That’s poaching.”

 

“I want to get to know him better.”

 

Daisy hopped off the table, clearly bound for her own work-station. “You two would make a cute couple.”

 

Jemma wanted to shrink. She could see herself in 3D folding up into a place under the counter and hiding from the light.

* * *

 

 

Jemma made it a point to walk home alone. Stayed longer than she did usually to be sure that Bobbi wouldn’t tag along after her and lay the pressure on any thicker.

 

And then her phone rang. She reached for the irritating thing inside her bag and marvelled at how she managed to get it out without spilling everything else out of her handbag in the process. She was expecting the same gentleman from the night before, either dropping her a line to ask her over or curse her for asking him over the night previous.

 

Jemma almost smacked right into a light pole when she saw her mother’s number glow on the screen.

 

“Hello Mummy,” she answered, knowing better than to avoid the call. Something about band-aids and all that. The scowl on her face was heavy and plastered. At least she didn’t call that frequently.

 

“Jemma, love, how are you? We haven’t heard from you in a while.” Mrs. Simmons sounded her own form of drunk.

 

She was almost certain that she could smell the rosé through the phone. It was the very reason she never kept any in the apartment. “You’re up very late. You must have missed me a lot.” She said, taking a deep breath in preparation for what was next.

 

“Of course, dear. Dad and I were just wondering if you’d given any thought on coming home for Christmas?”

 

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. Things are very busy at work. A new project and all that.”

 

Her mother waited before answering, but cleared her throat quite loudly. “This isn’t about Will, is it? That was a long time ago, Jemma.”

 

“Of course not!” Jemma said, too quickly. It hadn’t been a long time. Just six months, really. She bit her tongue to still her thumping heart, but found her footsteps quicken on the way back home where she would be safe and free from the stares of strangers who could see she was struggling.

 

“Please don’t hold this against me, darling.” Her mother said in her mourning voice, the one that she used when she was wrong.  

 

“Mummy, everything is fine. Will is gone and I am excelling at work as usual--which means I must spend a lot more time there.”

 

She could imagine her mother sitting at the kitchen table with her glass of wine, tossing her blonde-dyed hair over her shoulder, running her fingers around the stem of that glass. “I’m sorry about it, you know.”

 

“I know. Mummy, I’ve got to go. Bobbi is waiting on me for dinner.” She said, proud of the amount of lie that she was able to pack into a single line.

 

“Love you,” her mother said before making a kissing sound.

 

Like Jemma needed to be reminded. “Me too,” she said, and hung up before her mother could say anything else.

* * *

 

 

Bobbi was waiting outside the front door of Jemma’s apartment, leaning against the wall in the corridor, her white jacket tied tight. She looked uncomfortable on purpose. “I’ve been waiting on you,” she said.

 

“Couldn’t have been too long, huh? You’re still in your heels,” Jemma said, and she rooted in her coat pocket for her keys.

 

“I am surprised, really, that this door was locked. Wasn’t last time.” Bobbi said. She lined up behind Jemma to enter the dark apartment.

 

“I wasn’t expecting you. I lied to my mother and told her that we were meeting for dinner. That’s not why you came over, was it? Did I forget that we actually had plans?” Jemma asked. She removed her shoes at the door, clearly interested in not eating by then.

 

Bobbi lazed her way in and leaned against the breakfast bar. “I wanted to apologize for the stuff about Leo. It was pretty creepy.”

 

“Right.”

 

“Jemma, I just didn’t want something…”

 

“My mum’s all the way in England, Bobbi. I can’t imagine she’s going for the _new_ boys in my life.”

 

“Boys?” Bobbi’s eyebrow perked up.

 

Jemma shook her head and clarified “No, just boy. And he goes by Fitz.” She looked into the sink because she was sure of the look Bobbi would have, teetering on interest, and she didn’t want to feed it.

 

There was the sound of a chair pulling out, and the amazon of a woman who had followed Jemma in made herself at home. The air was thick with the words that Bobbi was about to say, and once the fog settled around them, she finally spoke. “Will was the worst kind of man, Jemma.”

 

“I know.”

 

“Does your mother ever talk to you about it? Try to make things right after what happened?”

 

Jemma looked through her cabinets. “I don’t know what she could say or do to get to that end, but she’s still the mum that I baked holiday cookies with.”

 

“What about your dad?”

 

“Ah,” Jemma breathed. Once again, there was nothing to make for dinner, only this time, there was also nothing to drink. She felt unsteadiy as she moved from cupboard to cupboard. “They split up, for a while after. Got back together in the end.”

 

“You don’t have to do that, too, you know. Break up with her and then get back together with her. She is your family, but even family is wrong a lot of the time.”

 

Jemma couldn’t counter that. She could, of course, drop off the face of the earth. She had before; it could certainly be done. She’d tried that at one point. “I don’t have to do anything.”

 

Bobbi smiled. “I like that.”

 

“She used to take me out to the countryside, just she and I and we would spend the weekend away from Dad. It was special back then. Dad did the same, but those visits were different, too.”

 

Bobbi waited, unwilling to press, which was the better option. “If I caught Hunter in that same position, I think I might have killed him.”

 

“I almost did.” Jemma admitted. “I thought I might go for his head, but we all think that we’re going to break out the flamethrower, while in reality,” she said, and she felt her eyes glaze over. She couldn’t gather the fortitude to stop it from happening.

 

It was the vision two of them again, huddled underneath her parent’s shell-white quilt, faces crossed with both shame and what could have passed for horror in the moment. Jemma didn’t tell her father when she found them together. She didn’t speak about it until she and Will were both far away from England and she had found somewhere to hide. Then was when she gathered her strength and forced Will out. Even then, only with Bobbi right beside her.

 

“Jemma?”

 

“In reality, you never know how you’ll respond until it happens in front of your eyes.” She finished. Her chest was heavy and hollow like the inside of a pomegranate. She had cried in the airplane bathroom more times than she could count on just the flight back to New York.

 

“You have changed a lot since then,” Bobbi said in the effort to sound encouraging. She grinned with sincerity, too.

 

Jemma knew what that meant, but knew better than to bite at any bait. “You’re right. I have a bit more of a backbone these days.”

 


	7. Babylon Syndrome

Jemma couldn’t remember the reason she had agreed to attend the Christmas party. After all, she and Fitz hadn’t spoken for the past two weeks and she was certain that he’d wisened up and made a break for it. There was only so much she could blame him for after her rather embarrassing outburst.

 

But the walk to Fitz’s apartment was frigid. Her sweater was snug, but didn’t do anything to keep out the wind, and Jemma could feel the warmth drain from the tips of her ears and nose as she pushed forward. It had snowed once or twice that winter already, but the only remembrances were the ash-colored piles of ice that had accumulated on the sidewalk and threatened to lay claim until the next June.

 

The building was surprisingly clean. Despite the habitat, glittering with old garbage, the tall apartment complex was light in color with big wide windows that promised to swallow in the sun in the summer. The foyer just inside the heavy gray door was warm enough that even Jemma’s toes could not complain of the frost upon entering.

 

“Jemma!” Fitz called as she turned the corner toward the lift. “I thought I’d walk you up.” He grinned with his nose scrunched up and pulled her into a hug. Had they become old friends at some point?

 

“Oh, thank you.”

 

“Mack is upstairs with a few people already. Bobbi and Hunter are coming later, he said.” Fitz wiped absently at his nose. “I met your friend Bobbi.” 

 

“You did?” The flush on Jemma’s cheeks was gone and replaced by the stark embarrassment that she expected from Bobbi’s signature sneaking. After what she said about not holding back, Jemma expected to see her turn a corner any minute looking for nefarious clues. Why hadn’t Bobbi told her?

 

Fitz pressed the button for the eighth floor, and turned to face Jemma head-on once the doors closed. “I just want you to know when we go in there, that you’re probably going to get hassled a bit.”

 

“What?”

 

“You know, just because you’re a girl and I asked you to come. It’s-it’s not a  _ big _ party.” He frowned. “It’s only fair to warn you now.”

 

“How many people are going to be there?”

 

“Maybe ten.”

 

An intimate gathering. She nodded, slowly. This wasn’t what she had imagined at all.

* * *

 

It had only been earlier in the day that he’d called, both of them at work fidgeting with their respective puzzles. 

 

“My roommate is having a party and I want you to come,” Fitz had rushed into the phone once she answered.

 

“When is it?” She asked, looking around at the others in the lab, hoping they didn’t see her talking in the middle of the workday. 

 

“It’s tonight.”

 

“Tonight?” She gasped. And sure it was a Friday--a traditionally good day for a party--but she’d already made a date with a herself in her sweltering corner booth at The Ostrich. 

 

“It’s a Holiday party. What do you celebrate?”

 

“Science.”

 

Fitz had sighed audibly into the phone.

 

“Christmas,” she answered, and even she was unable to hide the smile in her voice. She was thinking of hot cocoa and sparkling wine. There had been a time when Christmas was cozy and comforting. The smell of citrus. She remembered sweaters with reindeer on them and the popping sound of Christmas crackers and now, she was thinking of the fireplace that he certainly did not have in his apartment and the one that she had imagined in her dream home as a child.

 

While she waited for an answer, she could hear the nervous rustle of papers flipping in the background.  “I, um… I haven’t seen you in a long time. It would be nice if you came.”

 

“I’ll come. Text me the address.”

 

“It’s at our apartment.”

 

She felt herself lean in. “I’ve never been there. You’ll have to text me the address, Fitz.”

 

“Oh, yes, right. Okay. I’ve got to go. See you tonight.”

* * *

 

Drawing a slow breath, She followed Fitz into the common area of the apartment. The far wall was exposed brick decorated with a strand of lights duct-taped around the moulding and halfway hanging on, threatening to topple into the tree. When she got close enough, Jemma could see that the ornaments (snowflakes cut from used scantrons) had been stapled onto the branches. This was an apartment that was made for men. Or one that men had made.

 

“Hey,” a very tall man said as he held out his very solid hand. He’d come almost barrelling down the corridor off to the left, a much smaller woman on his heels. “I’m Mack.”

 

“My roommate,” Fitz explained from where he stood, an entire head shorter than Mack. “He works with Hunter and me. And this is Elena; she’s Mack’s girlfriend.” Fitz said, pointing at the woman who had chased Mack out of his hiding place. 

 

“I’m a whole woman, Fitz, not just a girlfriend,” Elena pushed him playfully. She swung her long braid over her shoulder and smirked. 

 

“It’s nice to meet you,” Jemma said, shaking her hand.

 

Mack chuckled and turned to Elena to talk to her in a whisper away from the two of them and the other party guests. None of them seemed to want to bother her too badly, and for that she was thankful.

 

“They seem nice,” Jemma said, following Fitz into his kitchen. She shook her own head at the foolishness of her own doing. Such scripted chatter.

 

“Nice, alright,” Fitz said, smiling. He popped the cork out of the bottle of a new bottle champagne and filled an appropriate amount into a gold cup for her. “Nice until you develop an intense desire to watch Firefly reruns and they are spooning on the couch in front of the big television.”

 

“I heard that!” Mack bellowed from the other side of the apartment.

 

But Fitz only smirked. How was it that he had found these people so quickly? Smuggled his way into their hearts--or at least appeared to have done so?

 

He leaned against the counter beside her and examined the food that had been laid out before reaching for a piece of prosciutto from an impressive charcuterie board. “Thank you for coming.” He leaned in and kissed her cheek. “I wasn’t sure you would, even though you said so.”

 

“I keep my word. Is there somewhere I can put my handbag?” A deliberate move. She would be staying. She had already decided on the way over.

 

Fitz reached a nervous hand to the back of his neck, “yes, right, can I?” He took the thing from her shoulder and took off down a pitch dark hallway.

 

In the solitude, Jemma refilled her glass. In the distance of the common room, she could hear that someone had begun playing Christmas carols. She took another stilling breath. Bobbi would be coming. Jemma had not headed into battle alone. 

 

“Are you alright?”

 

“What? Oh, yes, yes I’m fine.” Jemma stuttered. 

 

She was drawn to the unwavering gaze of his eyes, and the color of the blueberry popsicles that she made at home with her Gran when she was six. “I’m fine. Just a little flushed.” And that was true, in the heat of the apartment, stuffed with people already, many of whom she did not have the presence of mind to meet, she could feel herself sweating.

 

“It is just a bit toasty,” he removed his cardigan and draped it over a chair. “Didn’t notice until you said something, but it may just be the champagne.”

 

Jemma looked into the gold liquid in her cup, and smelled the concoction within. “It’s delicious.”

 

Fitz edged near her and craned his neck to scan the room. “So are you,” he whispered, and put an almost hesitant hand against her waist.

 

Jemma held the side of his face and the new scruff that he’d grown since the last time she saw him. Those eyes, they were intense when he wanted. Soft when he did not. She leaned in to press her mouth against his, and he was velvety then, kissing softly as if she could have burst with enough force. 

 

In the kitchen, under the dim light of a flickering bulb, they were alone until the door opened wide and Lance Hunter strode inside.

 

“Hello, all!” He said loudly, clear that he had begun his party much earlier than everyone else. It was his trademark to bring life into rooms. Bobbi rather liked it herself.

 

She trailed behind him with more subtlety. “You made it,” She breathed when she saw Jemma and came up to wrap her in a hug.

 

“You don’t normally do that,” Jemma said. Other than the babysitting she did, Bobbi was not a touchy-feely woman.

 

“I’m proud of you is all.” She was quiet enough for only the two of them to hear.

 

Jemma pursed her lips. Proud of her for attending a party? And what about the brilliant work she had done on the neurocognition module--something Bobbi herself had been a part of and watched as it was worried into being. It wasn’t finished, but it was advanced, attractive, and very very enticing.

 

As Bobbi hurried off to hug someone new, Jemma turned to Fitz with her barely-concealed anger. He did not flinch under the daggers she was staring. “What’s wrong?”

 

“Do you remember those plans from that night at The Ostrich?” She asked.

 

“Of course.” His ears perked.

 

Jemma thought of the blue notebook she had written them in and the notes in the margins, someone else’s handwriting. “What did you think?” 

 

“It was masterful.” 

 

She was proud that he’d answered so prudently. And correctly. The thing was nowhere near practical application, but she was proud of it all the same. 

 

“You’re glowing,” he laughed. “I would have liked to have been a part of a project like that. How does it function?” A child seeing a bug close-up for the first time. A child petting a new and strange animal.

 

She shook her head, but looked into her glass and drank the rest of her champagne. “I wouldn’t know yet.”

 

“Funding?”

 

“Minds.” 

 

Fitz appeared to stumble. 

 

“Bobbi is wonderful and I love having her in the lab and Daisy--she’s actually very clever in her own way. It’s just the…” She remembered. This is what Bobbi had wanted her to do. To seduce the man into their office by way of technology.

 

“What’s the problem?” Hanging on the end his seat.

 

“It’s the, um, it’s the power… source.” She stuttered. No sooner had she said it that she felt regret pool in her stomach.

 

“Oh, well, you know, I could--”

 

“Fitz!” Mack called from the other room. “I need a hand in here.”

 

He walked off, bound for the common area. Jemma turned the corner to find the group gathered around an oak coffee table covered in playing cards.

 

“A hand?”

 

“Or two. Are you guys going to play poker with us?” Elena asked. She sat between Mack’s legs on the ground, sharing cards with him.

 

Fitz turned to her with a question in his eyes and wrung his hands. 

 

So she nodded.

* * *

 

After the party, as people filed out one by one and after Bobbi made a significant amount of eye contact with her, Jemma followed Fitz into his room.

 

The walls were a pale green and sparsely furnished. Only a bed and a desk, which was covered in stacks of books so that not even the top of the desk could be used. On top of his suitcase that he was using for an end table, his alarm clock sat.

 

She wasn’t sure what she expected, but it was more. She’s thought when she entered that there would be photos on the wall of the mother he missed or a chair with his clean clothes thrown on or something more than the starkly empty bedroom. “It’s charming.”

 

“Not yet,” Fitz dismissed. Even he turned in circles, unsure of his space. Jemma knew what it was like to feel an alien in your own home.

 

“It looks better than mine.” She tried to cheer.

 

“Barely--glass houses and all that.” 

 

“Hmm.”

 

Once he’d finished, he sat on the floor with those fluctuating eyes soft and set on her. “You don’t have to stay for me, you know. I’m--I mean, I wouldn’t be upset if you wanted to stay with me, but you know what I mean, right?” 

 

“I know,” Jemma said. She lay down on the bed. She was thinking of Hunter’s smile as he ran over Fitz’s already-won battles at work during the poker game. He was a man of means in the same way rock-climbers were athletes of purchase.

 

“Why didn’t you reach out to me?” She asked. Above her, the fan spun lazily, spinning as much as her head was. After the champagne, there had been gin and tonics all around.

 

“You mean last week.”

 

“I was waiting on you.” She said. It was true. Her stomach turned flips at the admission. 

 

He paused. “ _ I _ was waiting on you.” The bed moved under Fitz’s weight as he sat in the spot next to her on the mattress. With reverence, he untied and removed each of her shoes and placed them silently on the floor. And Jemma waited.

 

Fitz flicked off the light and climbed into bed beside her. She could feel her heart split in two as he wrapped her in his arms and pressed his nose against her hair.

 

“I think I need your help.” She whispered.

 

“With what?”

 

She bit her tongue, debated, and then answered. “With my project at work. You are by all accounts the only one qualified to look things over.”

 

“I’d be excited to.” He said. His tone was excited too, and his heart. She could feel that through his tee-shirt.

 

She wished she hadn’t.


	8. Hell or High Water

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you wanted romance in this chapter, I've got bad news. It's raining glitter and angst, just like any good Christmas!
> 
>  
> 
> Also, if v*mit makes you squeamish, I'm warning you that there's more than just a little bit in this chapter.

In the waking up, as usual, there was the sound of police sirens, but Jemma jerked awake and sat up at a dead straight ninety-degree angle on Fitz’s mattress. She was still in her clothes and could feel the night’s sweat dewy against her skin. Her head was pounding. To her left, the alarm clock was blaring, and Fitz was still dead asleep in the bed between her and the infernal device. She reached over him and fiddled with the buttons before unplugging the thing in frustration.

 

“Ugh,” Fitz muttered under her arm.

 

She froze.

 

“Jemma?” He whispered, his eyes blinking in the light of his room which she realized for the first time was not even decorated with curtains. He looked at her: a man blinded by the light.

 

“Good morning.”

 

He grinned lazily at her before settling in again, and pulled her into the space beside him, which was radiating heat.

 

“No, oh no--” she shot up and headed for the bathroom, leaving the door wide open.

 

He didn’t follow her right away, but once she had sat down on the floor, he padded into the bathroom with his socks on. “Alright?” He asked, and sat down on the brilliant blue bathmat beside her.

 

“Just a moment longer and then I’ll go. I’m fine, really.” She said, quick to flush the toilet before he could see what had happened. Hearing was a different story.

 

His eyebrows twisted in concern. “You didn’t have too much to drink, I thought.”

 

She shook her head. _Only because you weren’t looking very hard._

 

He rubbed her shoulder. “Take your time, Jemma. I’ll wait with you.”

* * *

 

 

Jemma made it into the shower just seconds after she made it back to her flat. The water, scalding, turned her skin red and she sat on the floor watching as she became each color of the rainbow in turn. The blue in the tips of her toes turned white and yellow and red, and then her hands. She burned like acid and threw up again, this time into the drain.

 

She stayed there listening to the drum of the water against the tub until it ran cold as ice, and sat still until she shivered and had to turn it off.

 

It could have been an hour, or minutes, but when Jemma finally stood, her body positively ached. It was a chore to towel at her hair and once she had finished, she was exhausted enough to crawl right into her bed, her skin still soaked.

* * *

 

 

Bobbi came to visit again, as if she had been called, and found Jemma writhing in her bed.

 

“Hey,” she said in that voice. “Are you alright?”

 

Jemma opened her eyes and rolled over, unbothered by her state of undress. “I feel like death.”

 

“Look like it too. Have you kept anything down?” She touched a hand to Jemma’s forehead.

 

Jemma shivered at the cold touch. “I haven’t tried to eat anything.”

 

Bobbi bit the corner of her mouth. “Daisy and I are meeting up for some lunch.”

 

“Lunch?”

 

“It’s after noon, Jemma. We’re meeting up soon, so do you want to come?” She sat on the bed beside her fully-dressed, coat and all. But despite this, Bobbi leaned against the open pillow as if she had all the time in the world.

 

“I don’t know if Daisy would be too happy to see me.”

 

“I’m telling you, she really doesn’t mind you at all.”

 

Jemma hummed something non-committal.

 

“Okay, well that settles it. I’ll just make you.” Bobbi strode to the closet and picked something out to throw at Jemma. “You’re wearing this. We can go with your hair wet like that, and you definitely don’t have to put on any cosmetics.”

 

Jemma grunted. Bobbi could say that, she looked like a blonde angel with or without eyeshadow.

 

“Just put on the clothes, Jemma. I’ve had it up to here.” She said gently.

 

Without flourish, she shoved her body into the clothes and met Bobbi in the living room, her hair wild and wet and curly, and sure to freeze once they went outside. She put on the thick coat that Bobbi had insisted on as well as the boots she chose.

 

Once they stepped out into the street, Jemma could see: the entire city had been blanketed with snow. It didn’t look like it was planning on letting up any time soon.

* * *

  


Daisy had ordered everyone water and was scrolling through her phone when the two of them arrived. “Jemma, lovely to see you. You look like death warmed over.” She joked.

 

“Ha. Ha.” Jemma mocked, taking the seat between Daisy and the window.

 

“I told you that I was going to make her come with me,” Bobbi pointed.

 

Daisy grimaced. “I’m suddenly glad that you wouldn’t let me put money on that bet.”

 

Jemma settled in and took off her coat. This was a restaurant she had never been to before, something full of light with a tiny vase of flowers on the table. It was some place a bunch of girls would meet up on a Saturday for lunch. She took a deep breath. It been a long time since she took part in an activity like that.

 

“Where’s Hunter?” Daisy asked, scrolling through her phone again.

 

“On his way.”

 

“You invited Hunter?” Jemma asked in disbelief. “This doesn’t exactly come off as his natural habitat.”

 

“He loves scones. I invited Yo-yo, I mean Elena, too, but she had to work.”

 

The image of that smiling woman tagging along behind Fitz’s roommate came back to Jemma.

 

Daisy gave Bobbi a look that she didn’t even bother to conceal.

 

“What is that look for? What are you on about?” Jemma asked in defense.

 

Bobbi shrugged. “It’s not worth worrying about. Just a Hunter thing.” She waved at a waitress, flagging her down for a cup of coffee.

 

“I’ll have a bloody mary, if you don’t mind,” Jemma ordered and reached for her ID.

 

“Sorry--she’ll have a coffee as well, actually.” Daisy said loudly. She glared at the waitress, who awkwardly agreed to supply them with a pot.

 

Jemma scowled. She was taken aback once more by that woman. Where did she get off?

 

“It’s a gorgeous snowy day; don’t you want something hot to drink?” Bobbi said.

 

It was then that Hunter arrived, his nose and ears pink from the cold, even under his ski hat. “Hello, ladies.” He was quieter than the night previous. For all his energy, he was an appropriate man. Jemma knew she never gave him enough credit for that. He sat across from Jemma and started in on his glass of water even before everyone else had finished saying hello.

 

“It _has_ been a while, hasn’t it?” He said to her.

 

“Right.”

 

“Haven’t seen you ‘round the apartment in ages.”

 

Bobbi broke in. “She’s been very busy with work.” Once the waitress arrived with their fresh pot of coffee, Bobbi stood and took turns filling each of their cups.

 

Daisy gave Hunter that same look.

 

“What is going on?” Jemma asked, this time with more ferocity. And then she caught wind.

 

“We’re just talking.” Daisy said. She scooted her chair out, effectively blocking Jemma from leaving the table. And of course they’d put her right inside the table against the window.

 

Jemma canvassed the room. If she stood up and stepped over the table beside them, she could get out of this. That did put her at risk for tripping and falling flat on her face, however. “No-no-no, see I know what this is, and I’m not biting--”

 

“Simmons,” Hunter soothed. He reached out a cold hand and covered hers. “Look at me.” It was a strong presence. When Lance Hunter looked at someone with his brown eyes the size of dinner plates, they looked back at him.

 

“What?” She didn’t really want to listen to him. She just wanted Lance Hunter to stop looking at her like that.

 

“We’re going to talk about it here and now.”

 

“Fucking hell,” she cursed. She felt her eyes welling up. Jemma searched the room for another way out, and Daisy stretched her arm around the back of Jemma’s chair.

 

So they’d brought her there because it was quaint and cute and they didn’t want her to make a scene. It was obvious that see she was going to have to sit through this shit-show.

 

“It’s not going to be quick, Jemma.” Daisy whispered into her ear. Though she was firm in her body language, the most painful part was how softly she said it.

 

Jemma’s heart thumped, and even she could feel her breathing become shallower by the second. Her pulse rushed in her ears. “Please, Bobbi, don’t do this.” she spoke through nascent tears. Her voice was too watery and hearing it, even she had to clear her throat.

 

Bobbi looked away before wiping her own face. “No, Jemma, we have to do this.”

 

For a moment, Jemma was sure she could see her mother standing in the background of the cafe. She blinked and the woman was gone.

 

“Simmons, I can’t pretend to know everything that is going to go through your head right now.” Hunter took a long sip of his burning-hot coffee, eyes stuck to her like epoxy. “But I’ve been where you are before in a lot of ways.”

 

Jemma choked through a sob and was surprised when Daisy wrapped an arm around her.

 

“And I know that watching this is bad for Bobbi.”

 

Bobbi stood, wiped her reddened face with a napkin, and accosted the waitress a few yards away to ask for something. Or to get away from Jemma.

 

“It’s killing her the same way that it did when it was me she was scraping off the bathroom floor at the pub.” He said matter-of-factly. It was a wonder how he was so stoic in the face of her trembling.

 

“It _is_ ,” Daisy agreed. “And she’s a strong woman.”

 

“Why are you here?” Jemma shook her head at Daisy, “You don’t even like me. We have never spent time together. You barely know my name let alone what I could possibly be going through.”

 

Daisy seemed to lose her footing, but she didn’t lose her grip. “I’m here for Bobbi, and for Coulson, and for everyone else in the lab who can smell scotch on you first thing in the morning. And I’m here for you, Jemma--”

 

“No--”

 

“Because you are a badass scientist. I have seen you weave gold out of wool in that lab! I may not know you, but I do know that you could be my friend.”

 

Bobbi sat back down. “We’re here for you whether you like or it not.” She cleared her throat too. “We’re not leaving until you agree to stay at my apartment with me and with Hunter for the next week. It’s not rehab, but I know you’re too stubborn to agree to that.”

 

Jemma closed her eyes and fought back her next cry. Anger burned in the back of her throat like a corrosive. Goddamnit.

 

“Just through the holidays, love. It’s the hardest time of year.” Hunter smiled with half of his heart.

* * *

 

 

She knew they would have their way in the end. She knew that, and as Jemma sat up in Bobbi’s guest bedroom, without windows to crawl out of, without an exit to slither through, she knew that this was going to be the hardest project she had undertaken this past year. They had gone to bed an hour or so ago, or so they said, but that was Hunter sleeping in the living room on the couch in front of the fucking door like she was a prisoner.

 

“I mean, what if there’s a fire! Bobbi, this is ridiculous.” Jemma had protested.

 

“Well, then don’t set one.” She replied. “A promise is a promise.”

 

“I keep my word.”

 

Hunter had nudged into the conversation carrying the second bag of things from Jemma’s apartment. “I’m the expert on this, and your word isn’t good enough. so you’re welcome to watch as I go through this bag here in search of your stash.” He said.

 

So, it was only one week before Christmas, and the lab was closed, and Bobbi had stolen her. Once more, Jemma rushed to go empty her stomach.

* * *

 

 

She woke to the sound of a siren...or a text message notification and a throbbing headache as well as a fever.

 

Fitz had told her good morning and had written more, but the light was awful enough that instead of reading, Jemma laid back in the strange bed with the strange smelling sheets and the strangely stuffed pillows which she had no desire to leave. She loosened her frustrations with a groan, which Bobbi must have heard because she came right in and flicked the lamp on. The room filled with a mild yellow light.

 

“I brought you this.” She said, carrying a plate of toast and a bag of saline under her arm. She was all smiles.

 

“Why do you always look like the color yellow, Bobbi? And where the hell did you purchase a bag of saline; are you sure that is safe?”

 

“Excuse me, I also have a doctorate.” She said, ignoring Jemma and setting to work. Between them in the silence, she tacked the bag to the wall and used her skilled hand to pluck the necessary end into Jemma’s arm without a flinch.

 

Jemma laid the toast down on on her stomach but didn’t dare take a bite. Her phone flashed and made that noise again.

 

“Is that him?” Bobbi asked. She had brought a book as well, but instead sat on the chair by the lamp ready to talk.

 

“Why do I feel like I’m in hospital?”

 

“You sort of are--don’t dodge my question.”

 

Jemma lifted the phone to read with her shaky hand, but it was certainly Fitz. She knew before she even looked. “Good morning. Glad I saw you Friday. Have plans for the holiday?” She read aloud, knowing it would cheer Bobbi up after the charged day they’d had before.

 

“Are you going to…” She asked with hesitation.

 

Jemma sat the phone down, and on cue, it buzzed again. She read aloud once more, “Sorry if that’s too much. Are you feeling better?”

 

Bobbi smirked. “We can see he’s not afraid of the old double-text.”

 

“He isn’t,” Hunter shouted from the other room.

 

“Why is someone always listening to me?” Jemma asked.

 

“You’re compelling, love.” Hunter leaned against the door frame and devoured his own slice of toast. “I should note to you, lest you feel uncomfortable, that Fitz and Mack are both coming over for football reruns later this week.”

 

“Again?!” Bobbi exclaimed, sitting straight up in her chair.

 

“What?” Jemma watched.

 

“Okay, okay. Something different. Video games?” He coaxed.

 

Bobbi turned back to Jemma and whispered in a low voice. “I am so tired of soccer. Every day this week.”

 

“I am on holiday,” Hunter defended.

 

Jemma waited for Bobbi to settle down, but caught herself looking at her phone again. “What do I tell him?” She asked.

 

Hunter turned and left them for another room, where he could be heard turning on another match on the television.

 

“There’s no easy answer. You could tell him you’re sick.”

 

All at once, Jemma was thrilled that she didn’t have to run for the bathroom. What was this glorious thing? She poked at the IV in her arm with a shaky finger.

 

“Don’t-don’t touch that.” Bobbi chided, swatting her hand away.

 

The two sat in silence. Jemma realized that there had never been a moment that she had spent with Leo Fitz where she had not been or was not presently drinking.

 

“He is a very sweet man,” Bobbi said quietly after a while.

 

“Very clever, and pasty, and handsome.” Jemma laughed. She sat the cell phone inside the empty end table and closed the drawer. “So I’m not...not sure about that at all. I suppose I’m used to fancying monsters.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	9. Mistletoe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise! Another chapter already!

It was the second day after the detox when Jemma  inevitably ventured out into the living room, not nearly as nauseated as she had been for the past weekend. It was a wonder to be a semblance of normal when she had stopped functioning a while ago. Her body still shook, and it still hurt, but she padded out into the living room in her thickest socks and sat beside Hunter on his overstuffed sofa.

 

“Looking good, kid.” He chimed, but still had his eyes stuck on the television, where he was either watching or playing football.

 

She patted his shoulder without replying and wrapped herself up in their blanket, something fluffy and deep blue and fantastically soft. 

 

“It’s good to know that you aren’t trying to sneak anything past us.” 

 

“What?”

 

“I was the worst kind of alcoholic. Sneaking things into my boot, behind books on the shelf. Don’t get any ideas, speaking of.”

 

“No, I couldn’t.” She admitted. Being that person hurt. Not just her friends, but herself. She wondered how Hunter knew that she was earnest.

 

The pair sat quietly together in the living room for a long while. The snow had stopped the day before, but the sky was not clear. Instead, the clouds touched each other with abandon, shoved each one way and one the other, still blanketing New York in a type of blurry light that made one want to stay inside watching movies rather than venture out to build snowmen. Jemma watched through the window as people headed indoors , kicking ice and snow off of their shoes at the entries of their homes.

 

“Are you eating today?” Hunter asked.

 

“Maybe.” 

 

“What if I told you that Mack was bringing tacos?” He asked, wiggling an eyebrow with a mark of insinuation.

 

Jemma bit the inside of her cheek. She didn’t care too much for tacos, but even the parts of her that liked it weren’t sure they liked what Hunter was suggesting. She could imagine sitting in the living area between all of them as they watched something she wasn’t interested in and tried pushing her closer and closer to Leo Fitz. 

 

He could probably love her. It was evident in his nervousness with her and his willingness to give. To push his own boundaries places he shouldn’t. And she couldn’t say he wasn’t a kind and handsome man.

 

“So that’s tonight. Where’s Bobbi?”

 

“Shopping. She’s bad for that at the last minute.”

 

“Did you tell Fitz that I’ve been here, Hunter?” She asked, reminded all at once of the unanswered text messages that Fitz had sent to her and the phone call that she did not answer just a few hours before.

 

He turned to see her, stopping the screen he had been fixed on with his remote. “I didn’t. I won’t. It’s not my place to alter or to weigh in on this situation.”

 

Jemma tiptoed back into the bedroom and took her phone from the drawer. She must have typed and deleted a hundred times before settling on the message that she would send him. “I’ve been staying with Hunter and Bobbi. I’m ill, though. Sorry I didn’t answer your messages.” She held her breath when she pressed send. 

* * *

  
  
  


Bobbi decorated for them as soon as she arrived back, and Jemma laughed at her openly. Sure, she was tired of football, but was fine hosting a party to celebrate it.

 

“Eh, well, Mack doesn’t like it either. He just likes Hunter and so do I.” She shrugged. Bobbi hadn’t made any food to eat for them, but she had draped garland around the windows and arranged a felt reindeer atop the television. 

 

Jemma watched from her nest on the couch. “I told him that I was going to be here.”

 

“Hunter?” She asked, without paying real attention. She was focused on the string of lights that she was untangling from a box. Already, the flat had been transformed. Bobbi loved the holidays and it was evident  from the ribbon tied around the kitchen soap bottle to the ring of bells hanging from her bedroom doorknob.

 

“I mean Fitz. I, um, figured it was better to be open about that so I didn’t run the risk of being outed during your party.”

 

Bobbi moved toward her and fidgeted with her gold garland. “Do you like him? Really--answer me that honestly.”

 

Jemma rolled her eyes. At what point had she lied enough to keep everyone so skeptical? “I won’t pretend that I know. But he sat with me during my hangover last Saturday and he promised to help me with the Prometheus Operation.”

 

Bobbi nodded. “What I’m hearing is that you’re not sure, but that you need help on this project. If that’s the only reason you’re still talking to him, I think we’re close to figuring that puzzle out anyway, Jemma. We probably could do this without him.”

 

“No, we’re not getting anywhere without an engineer.” She admitted. She stood on shaky and weak legs to help with the untangling of the garland.

 

“Okay. I didn’t mean anything I said about you having to give this a shot or seducing him into working with us. That was a joke.”

 

“I know, Bobbi.” Jemma laughed. Of course she knew.

* * *

  
  


Jemma didn’t bother changing into anything different before this gathering. She was comfortable in her “rehab clothes” as her friends had called them. Her pants were warm and worn, but she didn’t mind how she looked in them and her white thermal shirt was equally wonderful in its own way. She looked pale and had been in a ponytail since she’d arrived, but she got the feeling that Fitz didn’t care how she looked. No, since the two of them had started sending text messages in strings, he kept reminding her how  _ clever _ she was.

 

When he arrived with Mack, carrying a bottle of fizzy drink, he locked onto her and made a beeline for the seat beside her in the living area. 

 

“Alright, Turbo, you holding that soda hostage? It tastes bad all warmed up. Bring it back to the fridge.” Mack called without looking up from the tacos he was loading on his plate in the kitchen. The room swelled with the smell of hot cheese and sweet onions.

 

“Who are you kidding? You wouldn’t care if I poured it out of a shoe for you, Mack.” He joked. He nudged Jemma with his elbow and she cracked a smile.

 

Hunter came and stole the bottle out of Fitz’s hands to bring back to the kitchen, mocking him with a scrunched nose.

 

“Nice to see you,” Jemma said, trying hard to be clear.

 

He leaned over and kissed her cheek, his mouth cold against her skin. “You’re burning right up. Been in bed these last couple of days?”

 

“Something similar.” She answered. Bobbi offered her a taco on a plate with most of the ingredients removed, but she sneered. Even thinking about that food, no matter how inoffensive Bobbi tried to make it, made her stomach churn.

 

“Right awful to be ill so close to Christmas,” Hunter said as he headed back to his seat.

 

The five of them settled in front of the television, Bobbi guarding at Jemma’s feet like a Mama Goose. There was nothing but the sound of chewing and slurping for a while until Hunter, much to Bobbi’s visible dismay, turned on football again.

* * *

 

 

Fitz walked Jemma to her room at the end of the night, after she had fallen asleep on the sofa and jumped awake at the sound of Hunter’s laughing, and tucked her into the guest bed. He reverently covered her to her neck, as she had mentioned moments prior to falling out in the living room that she was bloody freezing. “Have you seen a doctor?” He asked, closing the door behind him and narrowing his brow. He kept distance between them, stood far away with his hands in his pockets.

 

“I am a doctor,” Jemma answered. Her eyes were heavy as blue whales, but somehow her mind kept racing. Slowly, things began to turn black as her eyelids.

 

“What’s wrong?” 

 

Jemma cleared her throat. She knew she didn’t have to answer, and maybe she shouldn’t. It must have been a while that she was silent, because Fitz spoke again.

 

“I’ve a couple of ideas.” He admitted. His shoes clicked against the ground and Jemma realized that he must be coming to sit in the chair. “Are you… going through something?” He asked.

 

“We all are,” she answered in a small voice. With great effort, she propped her eyes back open to look at him with the black (w)hole of her attention--or the parts of it that she could scrape into order.

 

He shook his head, twisting his mouth into a screw. “You don’t have to tell me the truth, but I want you to know that you can.”

 

She breathed out, swiftly, careful to stop thinking before she spoke. “I’m probably an alcoholic. So Bobbi and Hunter have been holding me captive in my own… private rehabilitation clinic.”

 

Fitz nodded, but frowned. “That would explain a lot.”

 

“Not one of your theories?”

 

“Only one of them.” He conceded. “I had others. Thought maybe you were just avoiding me or busy with work or were cheating on another man with me.”

 

Jemma closed her eyes again. “Did you walk here from your flat?”

 

“We did.”

 

“It’s cold out there. You could stay with me, if you wanted.” She pulled a hand out from under her big down comforter and reached toward him, not expecting him to take it. Her heart fluttered, but she avoided looking at him, choosing instead to look into the floor.

 

He didn’t take it.

 

Surely he was disappointed or angry or disgusted. 

 

The sound of laces untying filled the cavern between the two of them. Then the sound of buttons undoing, and then, lastly, the skidding drag of slacks dropping to the floor.

 

His hand held hers, only for a moment, before he crawled in beside her and flicked off the lamp.

 

The inside of Jemma’s eyelids turned from red to deep blue, only one light glowing under the door, reminding them that they were not alone. There was still a world out there.

 

Fitz scooped an arm under Jemma and nestled her closely into his body.

 

She breathed deeply. 

 

“You should rest, if you need to. If this is… all it was that was keeping you so distant. I can still be here in the morning.”

* * *

  
  
  


For the rest of the time that Bobbi kept Jemma, Fitz stayed the night. He didn’t pry; he was not always there; he did not always ask questions, but Bobbi made faces because Jemma would simply not put away her notes on the Prometheus Operation. 

 

Fitz didn’t shy away. After the third day, two days before Christmas, as Jemma was brightening up and thinking more about work and returning with everyone else to the office, he brought his own notes. 

 

“Something like this?” He pointed to a page near the back of his notebook. “Because this is my prototype design and it’s still rather rudimentary, but it’s also--”

 

“Promising,” Jemma finished. She struggled to keep from jumping up and down as her eyes scoured the tech.

 

“What’s this?” Bobbi asked, drawn by the excitement in the living room. She peered over the notebook on the coffee table.

 

Fitz leaned into himself, hands on his hips. “This is a  _ very base _ concept of a power source. Ideally, the generator would be organic in composition, but it obviously can’t be.”

 

“Almost! These compounds are so similar to naturally-occurring parts of the brain.” She pointed to one formula in particular. He was suggesting, she realized, a free-flowing and self-preserving chemical reactor.

 

She turned to see him, wishing she wasn’t beaming, and felt her heart drum faster. Was this science or magic?

* * *

 

“Jemma,” Fitz asked in the night, his elbow nudging her as if to wake her up.

 

She groaned. She was not sleeping, but damn if she wasn’t knocking on sleep’s door.

 

Fitz’s voice was playful. “D’you hear reindeer?” He leaned up on his elbow.

 

“No.” She curled up against her pillow.

 

“Are those good tidings of cheer calling?”

 

“I doubt it.”

 

“Sounds like a sleigh might have just landed on the fire escape.”

 

“Fitz,” she scolded.

 

“Oh, don’t snark at me.” He wrapped an arm around her waist. “It’s Christmas eve. Don’t be a grinch.” 

 

In the darkness, he pressed a kiss to the side of her face, pulling her closer against him, body flush from neck to toe. His breath staggered.

 

“I didn’t get you anything.” He said. “Thought about it, but decided not to with everything being uncertain.”

 

“I didn’t get you anything either.” Jemma hadn’t left the house since she’d been committed to the apartment. Even as she said it, she new there were more reasons she hadn’t gotten him something for the holidays.

 

Fitz moved his attention to the spot of skin behind her ear, gently pressing more kisses into her neck, and the curve of her jawline. His hand, gentle on her waist, moved under the hem of her shirt and caressed the side of her breast. 

 

The entirely new feeling of the same man with a different touch. “You’ll let me be gentle this time?” He asked with his mouth pressed into her hairline.

 

A chill ran through Jemma’s spine. She should say no to what he was suggesting. She should remove his hands from her body and come up with an excuse; she had enough of them.  _ I’m not in the mood _ or  _ not in Bobbi’s house _ or _ I don’t actually like you and you’re just excellent to hold at nighttime _ . But not a one of them was sincere. 

 

His thumb travelled from the side of her breast to grace over the bead of her nipple before taking it between two of his fingers. He didn’t say anything or move any more. After a beat, Jemma realized he was waiting.

 

“Oh, no, I mean, I’ll let you…” There was no gracious way to say do whatever you want.

 

“Let?” He asked, a nervous teenager trying to figure out what he was supposed to be doing in the backseat of a car. His thigh, which was pressed between Jemma’s legs backed off just a little.

 

“What I’m trying to say is that I just want you to do what you like to do.” Jemma rushed. She winced. How clinical that sounded. 

 

Fitz breathed, still waiting. Probably attempting to formulate a response to that. “Do you  _ want _ to?” He asked carefully.

 

The was no denying that she was already wet, even from the few seconds that he had spent on her. Could he tell? She leaned up, pressing against the bed to kiss him back. 

 

Fitz moved gingerly in response, obviously more than happy that she seemed to agree, even without her answering with words. 

 

Jemma heard his breathing hitch as he pressed himself between her legs, grinding against her with the quietest sigh. With one hand, she grabbed his arse, and she slipped the other one into the waistband of his underwear to stroke him in what she hoped passed for explicit consent. 

 

He paused again. “Will you ask me?”

 

“What?” She asked as she wrapped her hand around the base of his cock. 

 

“Will you ask me to touch you?” 

 

“Please, Fitz,” she half-humored. “Will you touch me?” 

 

“I’d be delighted.” He kissed her hard on the mouth before undressing the both of them.


	10. Meteor Showers

Leo Fitz made love differently than he had sex. He was smoother and by all accounts, he was more gentle and slower and kinder. But there was more than one way to be kind and slow and gentle, and one of those ways was enormously torturous.

 

Jemma was stupid enough to compare the times that that she’d had the pleasure of taking him, or being taken by him, to bed. The difference was astounding. Wasn’t it? The way that two people move around the other like planets in orbit or one person crashes into the other like a meteor. Was she the meteor or the planet in this scenario? She wasn’t sure that it mattered. 

 

Fitz stayed the night the way he always did and Jemma, for the first time, counted her own blessing.

* * *

  
  


“You could come and spend the day with me.” 

 

“I don’t know if I’m allowed that,” Jemma said. “I’m still in prison.”

 

Fitz laughed. “The best kind of prison--since your friends are the ones who are guarding you.”

 

She rolled over in bed. Was it better or was it worse than being in an actual hospital? “I think I’m supposed to go back home tomorrow.” She missed that. Those bland gray walls and stacks of books were probably lonely, and there was a list of things that needed to be done before she could get back to the lab. She needed groceries.

 

“I’ll stay then, if you want. If not, I’ll go back to my flat and you can just let me know when you want to...uh, to see me again. Maybe a film?” Fitz stretched and dressed, but he couldn’t tear himself away from examining the wooden floor. 

 

“What? Don’t you have your own holiday plans?” 

 

“No, not really.” He pursed his lips. “Was nice waking up with you though,” he said quietly as he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. 

 

Jemma fought a smile. “You know, I will have to get you to come by the lab and add your schematics to the program on the holotable.” He could email them, she knew, but why not?

 

“You must be tired of me by now.”

 

She shook her head. “Not yet.” 

* * *

  
  


Bobbi held Jemma’s keys out in front of her like a pendulum, swinging them to and fro and obviously waiting for Jemma to grab for them.

 

“I’m waiting.”

 

The two of them stood outside the door of Jemma’s apartment, in the stuffy hallway where she’d spilled her bag a thousand times. Her duffel was heavy on her arm, but she was not going to budge and give Bobbi the satisfaction of winning the waiting game.

 

“You promise that you’re going to call me if you need me, right?” Bobbi asked with a pleading look on her face.

 

“To change a lightbulb or something? I know you’re tall enough to reach, but I can always stand on a chair.” 

 

Ah, there was that look. It creeped over Bobbi’s face, a mixture of fear and frustration.

 

“I’m kidding,” Jemma said defensively. “Obviously.”

 

With hesitation, Bobbi opened her hand and relinquished the set of keys.

 

They felt heavier than they used to. Jemma palmed them only long enough to get the lock open and pass into her home before dropping all of her things on the floor by the coat rack. “It smells horrid in here,” she realized with a wrinkle of her nose.

 

“Yeah, well, it usually does.”

 

Jemma cut her eyes. That was surely an untruth. There was no way that she could have lived in the rotting smell of souring whiskey with contentment without having noticed how it pinched the nose. With a shiver, the feeling of chill passed through her, but she bit the inside of her lip with the intention of in no way letting on that she was freezing.

 

“We should take a quick inventory,” Bobbi said as she shut and locked the door behind her. 

 

“So your plan is to spend your Christmas getting me settled into my natural habitat again?”

 

“Don’t make me laugh. This apartment is not your natural habitat. If anything, it’s the lab.” Bobbi turned to the thermostat and knocked it on before pushing up her sleeves and going into the kitchen to begin on dishes. 

 

Jemma took a deep breath. There was no sign that anyone had been in the flat in ages, but this was where she lived. How had she gotten so far as to dwell in a place that didn’t have paintings on the walls? How...had she gotten this far without noticing?

 

“Why did you let me do this?” She asked. “Why didn’t you shake sense into me?” Her chest felt hollow; only the breath had filled her up. It was a wonder there was anything else inside.

 

The faucet stopped. “Jemma, I..” Bobbi turned to her, back to the chores she had begun without being asked. “I thought that maybe you needed to be...I don’t know what I thought. Maybe that you wanted to pretend that you weren’t Jemma for a while.” 

 

“I guess you’re right.”

 

“Whatever it was that you were doing, that phase, lasted longer than I thought it would.” 

 

Jemma nodded, and turned to examine the flat again. Maybe it was the comparison to Bobbi’s home, the stark change, that made the place look so sad. Returning was bitter; it was not sweet.

* * *

 

The phone rang that night. Bobbi had been long gone, and Jemma was on her hands and knees in bathroom scrubbing the most filthy parts of the tub and floor. 

 

She eyed it. She didn’t have to answer. She knew who it was.

 

Instead, Jemma stood up and stretched. Her muscles ached so much less than they had in the days before, but they were tight. She remembered a time long ago that each muscle didn’t pull the others in her marionette body. She could reach over and touch each individual toe. She could balance all of her weight on one leg. 

 

Her mother’s phone call was was a promise. If the phone was passed to Dad, not a problem. Mum would ask questions that Jemma did not want to touch. 

 

She watched as the light on her cell phone dimmed and silenced. Bobbi had been right, after all. She did not have to answer.

 

Jemma wondered if it was cued that as soon as her mobile stopped ringing, there was a knock on the door loud enough to make her bolt straight upright and head to that door and peer through the looking hole. 

 

“Happy Christmas,” he greeted as soon as she opened the door, still in her dish gloves, which had slowly begun to turn black around the fingers from her intense scouring.

 

“Oh, and to you too,” she replied as she removed the things in a scramble.

 

Fitz came in as if he were used to the place by then. “It certainly smells sterile in here,” he said with a twitch of his mouth. He made himself at home immediately. “I brought some things. I wanted to celebrate.”

 

“I’ll place a guess: peppermints and hot cocoa?” She asked. In a quick canvas of the room, she realized he was right. Not only did the flat smell of ammonia, it looked like someone had been working on cleaning it all day. Because someone had been.

 

“You’d be wrong. Want to guess again?”

 

She did not, but she did anyway. “Christmas crackers and gingerbread?”

 

“No. I brought you this.” From his bag, he pulled out a tiny orange bead.

 

Jemma held in a laugh. What a fool thing. “What’s this?” She held out her hand and Fitz dropped the bead into it, a look on his face that was quite self-satisfied. She squinted and held the thing up to the light to see it better, and a very small monkey, orange and white, was winking back at her.

 

“It’s a monkey. It’s your present. Not for the holiday. For the other thing.”

 

“Sleeping with you?” Jemma winced.

 

His eyes grew wide. “No--ah, it’s for the past week. You know, the detox and the sobriety. For getting through it and coming home.” He waved his hands in front of him in the visual effort to move her suspicion onto something else. “If you wanted me to bring you a gift for that--It’s--I’d bring flowers, maybe?”

 

“Oh.”

 

“It’s not a token, really. I got the feeling you wouldn’t want one. So it’s a monkey instead.”

 

“Oh. Alright.” Jemma conceded. “Thank you.”

 

Fitz shoved his hands into his pockets. “Love what you’ve done with the place.”

 

“You’re trying to stay tonight, aren’t you?” Of course she knew the answer already. The small talk, the nervousness, the bag that he’d brought, which was very obviously his work bag with an extra shirt folded up in it; it was all very incriminating. 

 

“D’you want me to?” 

 

Jemma turned to head into the bedroom, which had not been cleaned yet. “You’ll have to wait until I’ve finished tidying. And the monkey will have to stay, too.”

 

“It’s a bit late. Do you want some help?”

 

Jemma caught a look at her clock and realized that a lot of the night had already passed while she was focused on the grime. She’d completely forgotten about dinner.

* * *

  
  


“So my mum is coming to visit.” Fitz said as the two of them settled into her bed. 

 

“Is she?”

 

“To bring some of my things from back home and to spend New Years Eve with me.” Fitz rolled over onto his back. He was louder in this cleaner room. It was as though the acoustics had been drowned out by the mess of piles of clothing and scraps of scribbled-on paper.

 

“That sounds nice,” Jemma said. So long as it wasn’t her mother paying her a visit, it did seem so. Maybe she should invite her dad to visit as well. It had been a while since he’d been to the States, not since she herself had settled in.

 

He made an affirmative noise and scooted his arm underneath her. “She’s like to meet you. It wouldn’t have to be for too long.”

 

“You told her about me?” Jemma wanted to exclaim.

 

He nodded. “Just a wee bit.”

 

Her head started to throb with the thought of having to impress her. She imagined Mrs. Fitz with curly brownish hair and the same blue eyes, with pearl earrings, and the thought was almost laughable. Could she have been as smart as her son? Was that possible?

 

“You mustn’t worry about it at all.”

 

“Does she also work with technology?”

 

He scoffed, but smiled all the same. “Absolutely bloody not. She’s a baker. Has a little shop that I used to live above her with.”

 

“What about your dad? Is he staying home to watch over things in the meantime?” Jemma asked. She imagined Mr. Fitz as a taller and thicker man with thin glasses. A man who’d started to gray right around the ears.

 

“Just Mum and me.” He said quickly, as if there was a reputation he needed fiercely to protect. Beneath Jemma, Fitz’s arm almost trembled. 

 

She turned up to the ceiling, to look at the glowing stars that a child had left there before she moved in. Will had left them there claiming that the scene was an almost perfectly rendered map of the constellations.

 

“I get the feeling,” Jemma began. She was slow. And nosy. And almost stopped herself then. “That this is part of the reason you don’t let people call you by your first name. Was he Leo, too?”

 

Fitz didn’t answer for a long time, but he studied those plastic stars as well.

 

She turned to look at him and gauge the appropriateness of the question she wished she hadn’t asked. With silence, her lover’s eyes welled and then blinked away what was left there. 

 

“He was not. Is not.” Fitz answered after a while.

 

“I’m sorry-I-I mean,” she paused. No, she was unsure whether she was sorry or not at all. Wasn’t this what he wanted? To make her see him?

 

He shook his head. In the night, the sound rustled against Jemma’s freshly-washed sheets. “Maybe I shouldn’t.” 

 

She breathed deeply, agonizing over something to say as an apology--something more sufficient than sorry. Whatever it was about his father, it must have been something atrocious. She cleared her throat. “My mother did something to me a while ago. Not yet a year. I don’t trust her anymore.”

 

Fitz didn’t answer, but the shaking in his hand stilled and he pulled her closer. 

 

“Whatever it is, Fitz, you don’t have to tell me.” 

 

“He left us when I was ten. It was probably better that way, just the two of us.”

 

She made an effort not to pry despite the dozens of questions which rose to the surface of her mind. 

 

“I don’t want to talk about it right now, but we’ll just say that he didn’t earn any tokens. Any monkeys, either.” 

 

Jemma reflexively reached for her stomach to favor the punch she felt in her gut.

* * *

  
  


The office was thankfully quiet on the first day back. Only a handful of people roamed the halls and there were no presentations to be made. The listserv was quiet. Most everyone was using their personal time to go on long vacations into the new year.

 

When Jemma arrived, there was no chatter of people filing in and putting things into their lockers, heading into their labs. She listened intentionally, and heard only the buzz of the overhead lights and the hum of the heating unit. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine herself alone in the library at her old university, but she could not smell the books. Instead, wafting into the space where she leaned against her desk/counter, was the smell of egg and cheese.

 

“Good morning, sunshine.” Daisy said. 

 

Opening her eyes, Jemma found the woman cross-legged on her spinning chair, a foil-covered breakfast sandwich in hand. “Quiet as a mouse today, aren’t you?”

 

“Sort of.”

 

“And just as cheesy.” Jemma said. She couldn’t be too cross with Daisy. After all, she had been...more gentle than Jemma might have deserved considering recent events.

 

“Glad to see you out of the same old getup.” She gestured to Jemma’s clothing.

 

“I am  _ trying _ ,” she admitted. And she had. The clothes were all hung up and laundered and waiting to be picked and it was much easier to dress appropriately when all the stars lined up. 

 

Daisy grinned.

 

“I see that.”

 

She hid her smile behind her breakfast food. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

 

“Deny, deny, deny.” She turned back to her computer an flicked on the power. It was comforting to listen to the same starting-up noise she had grown used to in her lab. It was a much safer morning that way.


	11. Without Fear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't mind the typos! I'm going back through the entire document to remedy them soon :)

There was an email waiting for Jemma when she arrived at work. Coulson’s correspondence had been marked urgent and above the time stamp that it was sent to her, the red exclamation point seemed more than threatening.

 

The subject line read: Status Report Operation Prometheus. 

 

“Yeah, I got copied on that, too.” Daisy stood and read over Jemma’s shoulder as she opened the email with bated breath.

 

“He’s getting tired of waiting, isn’t he?”

 

“Predictably. My supervisor in info-tech is thinking the same thing. They keep asking when I’m coming back to the old home world.”

 

Jemma met her eyes. That was not good. “What you’re saying is that they’re getting impatient and they want you back on their end.”

 

“Of course. I’m getting emails four times a day from other co-workers with questions about their apps.” She tossed the remainder of her breakfast into the garbage can under Jemma’s desk. “The best of the best, am I right?” She smirked.

 

“Where’s Bobbi?” 

 

“Dentist appointment.” Daisy explained on her way back to her space. “You know, I was thinking that this was going to be a more semi-permanent move. When I was assigned with Coulson, it sounded like there was going to be a major paradigm shift in our operations.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“More prosthetics and less weaponry.”

 

Jemma shrugged. “Well, we also do medicine, too, don’t forget.”

 

“No, I know. I was just getting used to the idea that there could be more than one approach to improving living conditions for people.” She said. Her voice was touched with what appeared to be grief.

 

Jemma caught a glimpse of her before looking back into the glowing screen. Layers. 

 

The nagging thought that she was right had lit a fuse in her head. Of course she had the chance to ask; she was supposed to meet, the email said, with Mr. Coulson at 1:00 to give him a status update.  She corrected her sluggish posture. That meant her plans had changed. She was not spending the day looking for a test candidate who met all the specifications for prototypical application. Now, she was indebted to updating the profile. Dr. Jemma Simmons was going to need a lot more coffee.

* * *

  
  


Coulson took the blue file that Jemma had prepared for him and flipped through the papers with a thumb. 

 

“This is a lot of material, Jemma.”

 

“Indeed it is,” she agreed. She had to give him enough information to understand the gravity of the need for the electrostimulator. Coulson didn’t have a background in anything close to that type of science. If she didn’t break this down block by block, he comprehend it fully. Of course Mr. Coulson was not a simple man, she knew, he just needed a thorough introduction after that one initial...introduction earlier that winter.

 

“When I told you I needed an update, I meant something more concise.”

 

She nodded. “This is a concentrated as the material can be.” Twenty-three pages, front and back.

 

He looked over his reading glasses to meet her eye. It was meant to be a look of intimidation, but Jemma knew he trusted her, especially on the scientific portion of their operations. “Alright. I’ll read this over and get back to you about it in the morning first thing.”

 

“Yes, sir.” 

 

He smiled at her, briefly, a flash of something that Jemma made a point not to read into. One day at a time was both a blessing and a curse. 

* * *

  
  


It was very late. Jemma was alone in the lab, glued to her computer and wishing she had the time for a walk down the hall, just to stretch her legs.

 

She turned to the sound of a light knock against glass. 

 

“Hi,” Fitz said, wandering over toward her workstation. “You know your security team is good for nothing.” He had the smallest smile.

 

“I didn’t think you were going to come today,” Jemma said. She’d thought maybe a week later or sooner if she begged.

 

“I’m happy to help. And interested, so I thought I’d come by.” He sat in Daisy’s chair. 

 

Jemma turned to the holotable. “Alright, so let’s dive right in, shall we?” She turned the thing on and Fitz scrambled out of the chair. “What are you so eager about?” She asked with a quick laugh.

 

He flushed a furious red. “I didn’t know we were going to start right away.” He admitted.

 

“No?”

 

“I was thinking there’d be a bit more chatting, a walk down the hall to show me the common area, a flip through your notes over a cup of tea, something more like that.”

 

“I doubt you need it. Besides, you’ve seen my notes before.” She remembered his writing in the margins, arrows and formulas. 

 

He nodded. Of course he didn’t need an introduction. In the light of the program Jemma had started up, he glowed. Before them, the brain diagram that the holotable always defaulted to on opening was a complex web of greenish lines. First in the corner of her eye, and then when she faced him, Jemma caught a look of awe on Fitz’s face, his mouth slightly open as though his eyes couldn’t take the whole image in at once and he could swallow up the rest of the information and digest it the old fashioned way.

 

She cleared her throat. “You’ve used a holotable before, haven’t you?” Her words were quieter than she expected. 

 

“Not since university.” 

 

“What? Aren’t you--”

 

He snapped up and took his hands from his pockets. “Well, I mean, it’s great over at my office. We have bread and peanut butter in the break room and a vending machine that works part of the time. And our security,” he smiled, “is much more efficient.” 

 

Jemma fought a laugh. She wasn’t sure what was more ridiculous: that someone as intelligent as Fitz was working for an organization that didn’t even have the money to feed him properly or that an organization that employed someone as intelligent as Fitz couldn’t repair a broken vending machine needed any type of security. Her hands, which had been mid-motion, stilled. “You moved here to work at some place like that?”

 

“Well, it was a great opportunity.”

 

“How?” Jemma demanded.

 

Fitz shrugged. “It was better than, you know, sweeping up in the bakery in the evenings. I was dying in Scotland.”

 

She couldn’t believe her ears. “You’re an expert in Stark Industries technology and you’re working in a dumpy little office in New York City of all places?” It was a fight to keep from shouting. 

 

Fitz’s eyes turned glassy in the green light. Hesitantly, he reached a hand up to the brain and spun it around, a ball dangling from a string.

 

She waited for him to answer.

 

He continued to fidget.

 

“Fitz?” 

 

“You know, I wanted to go out and do something different than how I’d grown up and somehow, I ended up right back home with Mum. An opportunity came knocking and I just agreed.” He shrugged again, this time avoiding looking back at Jemma. “I felt lucky enough that someone had even known my name and wanted to have me around.”

 

She reached out and stilled the spinning brain. “Do they even pay you what you’re worth?”

 

He closed his eyes. “Jemma, how would  _ you  _ even know what all I am worth?”

 

Had a breeze blown by? Something had knocked all the air out of her. What was that? 

 

“I’m sorry.” He said, touching her shoulder. “I didn’t mean that.”

 

Did he?

 

“It’s not ideal, I admit. It’s boring and they can’t ever pay for the projects that I want to research.” He grumbled. 

 

“Okay--well--”

 

“And I shouldn’t snap at you about it. You’re doing such wonderful work and you’re so kind. To me. To let me be a part of this, I mean.” 

 

“Okay,” she said. She flicked the holotable back off, and Fitz bit his lip. “I don’t know what all you’re worth. Not really. You’re right about that.” 

 

Fitz took Daisy’s seat again. “I can’t believe I said that.”

 

But Jemma could. It was only a matter of time.

* * *

 

Home, alone, was much too quiet. When she returned, she stood in middle of the living room and even though she knew she was exhausted, she wouldn’t be able to sleep. Jemma’s arms were heavy and her feet ached. A knot had smuggled its way between her shoulder blades and hammered on the back of her neck. It was a too-familiar feeling. She stood there and closed her eyes hoping to hear the sound of the city again, but it drowned itself out after a while. 

 

The humming sound of the refrigerator and the blasts of people honking their car horns in the street. That wasn’t enough.

 

_ Jemma, how would you even know what all I am worth? _

_ This is about Will, is it? That was a long time ago, Jemma. Please don’t hold this against me, darling. I’m sorry about it, you know. _

 

_ Just put on the clothes, Jemma. I’ve had it up to here. _

 

Jemma shook her head. She couldn’t get these people out, but she could certainly try to. She pulled her laptop off of the floor and turned on something to listen to in the background. If she couldn’t sleep and she couldn’t work and if Leo Fitz had decided that he really needed to spend the night at his apartment and hadn’t invited her to come, then what was there that she could do? The flat still smelled of disinfectant and out there on the street in the city that supposedly never sleeps, there were only strangers, either drunk or set on a mission that she was not meant to be a part of.

 

She hung her blazer on the coat rack, and pulled off her shoes to leave by the door. The Ostrich was open.

 

She unbuttoned the stays of her top and tossed it into the dirty clothes hamper, and the chill of the late December night summoned goose-bumps across her arms. She thought of the sweltering booth at the bar and the glasses of watered-down whiskey. How sweet it tasted. 

 

Jemma stopped, and stood in front of the mirror on her closet door. It was a strange sight, to see herself there half-naked and chilled in the place that was supposed to be her home. Her cell phone was sitting on the bedspread where she had tossed it, and it beckoned her as if with the intent that she should call someone and pretend as though she had the presence of mind to combat her cravings head on. Hunter. Bobbi. Maybe even Daisy. Yes, that was an option. 

 

She slid off her pants without ceremony and tossed them to the side. It hadn’t been that long, had it? Her body already ached. What was another hangover? The lights were still on in the kitchen. The computer was still playing background noises. 

 

Instead of doing what she really wanted, Jemma Simmons crawled into bed with everything still blaring and buried her head in the covers with her eyes snapped shut.

 

_ Go to sleep. Go to sleep. For the love of god, go to sleep. _ She repeated.

* * *

  
  


In the morning, Jemma dressed modestly and as cozily as she could. She made her tea and added in just a drop of cream and ate her toast with butter in the quiet dim light of the kitchen. As she brushed her teeth, breakfast behind her, Fitz’s orange monkey eyed her from his place inside the medicine cabinet. 

 

“You’re a metaphor or something, aren’t you?” She mumbled through her toothpaste. She rinsed and spat, and the monkey eyed her still. “Alright.”

 

She texted Fitz, uncertain if the offer still stood, that she would love to meet his Mum. 

 

The phone lit up and buzzed instantly with a flurry of quick text messages. He was picking her up that afternoon and tomorrow, they would be spending the day out and that night, if Jemma wanted, they could come and visit for a while, watch the ball drop on the live stream together, the three of them.

 

She took a deep breath. That definitely sounded better than sitting alone in the dark on New Year’s Eve and pretending that she was strong enough to continue imagining a world without that cheeky smile of his lighting up in the glow of her holotable. She typed back something in agreement and asked if he could come over that evening.

* * *

  
  


“You said this afternoon I thought this was what you meant,” Fitz was defending, standing in the middle of the lab with Jemma and holding all of his things on his shoulder in that bag he took almost everywhere.

 

“I didn’t mean to come get me. I thought you’d be by my apartment sometime later.” She whispered. 

 

He shrugged, but was defiant in stance with his hands on his hips and his mouth screwed into a scowl. “Should I go then or are you coming with me? It’s well past traditional work hours and I already put in an order for takeaway.” 

 

Sure it was only the two of them in the empty lab, but somehow, Jemma still felt embarrassed. A scowl was fixed on her face and she wasn’t sure how to unstick it. “I think--”

 

Between them, as they squared, Fitz’s phone rang in his pocket.

 

“It’s Mum,” he announced before answering. Despite what he had said about his lack of interest in sweeping up in the bakery, a smile danced under his nose.

 

Surely she had called in order to save the day. With a sigh, Jemma resigned to pick her things up and agree to follow Fitz wherever it was that he had ordered food. A loud gurgle erupted from her stomach, and even on the phone, Fitz could hear her and turned to give her a pointed look.

 

“I thought that was tomorrow night.” He whispered into the phone.

 

Jemma turned off the rest of the things she had been using in the lab and headed for her locker, having already pieced together that they’d mixed their dates up and Fitz was obviously due to have picked up his mother from the airport.

 

“No, no--Jemma and I will come and get you. Wait in the lounge and we’ll be over as fast as we can...Yes, love you too. See you shortly.”

 

“You forgot--”

 

“No, she forgot and then emailed me and of course I didn’t check my personal email. I was working all day.” He muttered. “I’ve promised you’ll come with me.”

 

Jemma stopped in her tracks. She’d heard that part, but didn’t realize it was a promise. “Fitz,” she complained by way of a whine. The gurgling sound made itself known again.

 

He furrowed his brow. “I’m sure she brought something for you to eat, anyway.” 

  
  



	12. Divine Transmutation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd never heard of first-footing before, and I'm not sure how popular of a tradition it actually is, but hey, it's in here anyway.

Imogene Fitz had never changed back to her maiden name when her husband left. She was a “tall” five feet four inches, light auburn, and she loved Leopold very very much. As the three of them sat together in backseat of the taxi that Fitz had ordered, she patted her son on the back a hundred times and squeezed his face at least thrice.  

 

“Thin as a rail, the two of you,” she poured to them after a while, and set to pulling out the several things that she’d stuck in her luggage, beginning with an entire loaf of sliced bread that she handed to Jemma while she dug out more goods.

 

Fitz smiled and gave Jemma a look. “She’s not asking you to hold that; she’s asking you to eat it.” He leaned back into the two of them with a look that could only be described as blissful. 

 

“Is Mack at home?” She trilled.

 

“Yes, but he isn’t expecting us tonight.” Fitz admitted to this because he had informed Mack, per his own report, that he was going to be with Simmons that night. Naturally, this meant Mack had planned something romantic for he and Elena, and Fitz had only just texted to let him know of the mishap they had all gotten into. Unfortunately, Mack had not sent him any messages in response.

 

Jemma bit into a piece of the bread that Imogene had made, and tried not to moan. It was delicious, and was surely only better when it was warm. It needed strawberries and butter. It was likely to melt under the combination.

 

Imogene passed a piece of pastry to her son and settled back down into her seat, satisfied that he instantly began shoving it into his face with abandon. “Well, I’ll still meet him, all in good time.”

 

“This is delightful, Ms. Imogene.” Jemma complimented, halfway through an honorific and halfway with nascent fondness. She had not reacted well to “Mrs. Fitz” when she disembarked the plane.

 

“Thank you,” She smiled the same smile that her offspring had with a touch of a wrinkle just around the outside of her eyes and a tilt of her head. “There’s more where that came from, love.” 

 

Jemma blushed. Her chest felt thick, heavy with something she couldn’t articulate. She looked into the slice of bread and tried to shake the feeling that felt like it might linger for a good long while.

 

“How was your flight?” Fitz asked with his mouth full.

 

“Long. Couldn’t have watched another film without wanting to pluck my own eyeballs out. Worth it to see you, though, and to meet your girlfriend.”

 

That blush, once the same hue as a newborn flamingo, ignited to a neon sign on Jemma’s face.

 

“No--no, I, uh…” Fitz stammered.

 

“What?”

 

“No, Simmons is a colleague, a friend.” He said, meeting Jemma’s eyes. “We just have started to go on dates,” he amended. 

 

Imogene considered. “Alright. Well. If you don’t mind, Leo, I’d like to get settled in somewhere. It’s a touch late for the likes of me.”

 

Fitz’s eye darted from his phone to the clock to the taxi’s window. “Mack hasn’t sent me anything back, Jemma, do you mind?”

 

Wasn’t much of a question, she knew, so she agreed and gave the driver her address. They’d passed her flat a while ago, and the man at the steering wheel didn’t complain. It meant a higher fare, after all.

 

It was prudent that they head in that direction; Jemma lived alone. There were no shenanigans to walk into and the flat was still very clean, though embarrassingly sparse. She hadn’t bought anything for the walls and things were still that drab plain gray.

* * *

  
  


Once Imogene had settled into Jemma’s bed, fresh sheets and all, Fitz and Jemma closed all the curtains and turned off all the lights. It had taken them four trips to get in all the luggage that his mother had brought, and Jemma couldn’t help but wonder exactly how much he had needed to bring across the pond and if this wasn’t a ploy to get all moved in to her apartment.

 

“She’s lovely, Fitz.” Jemma complimented. She was laying out her bedding on the couch where it had been agreed that she was going to sleep. 

 

“I was hoping you’d think so,” Fitz said. He himself had been directed to the floor by his affectionate mother. “You’re not angry? About the girlfriend thing?” He asked with hesitation.

 

Jemma wasn’t sure how to answer. “Not angry,” she settled.

 

“Not angry,” he repeated. He sat on the floor beside her, legs crossed, and leaned in close until their noses were only a fraction apart. “I can’t say that I don’t like the way that sounds. Can’t say that I wouldn’t prefer another answer, though.”

 

Jemma closed her eyes and when she asked her next question, which left her mouth in a whisper. “Are you asking me if I want to be your girlfriend?”

 

“You’ve only just met me, I know.” He answered. His fingers, lightly shaking, toyed with the edge of her blanket, flipping the corner back and forth.

 

He had certainly weaseled his way in, hadn’t he? And she was still very apprehensive and still very...damaged. That was the word she was thinking of when she stood before the mirror. Fitz’s hand reached for her face, and very softly, he held her cheek. For a moment, Jemma allowed the contact, but the old apartment building made a noise, probably settling she knew, jarring enough for her to jump out of the embrace. 

 

“Only just,” she repeated. 

 

Fitz cleared his throat, and his voice dropped in pitch and volume. “You know, you’re the smartest woman I’ve ever met. Likely the most stunning one that I’ll ever see again for the rest of my life. I’m not this person, usually, either, who rushes into things.”

 

He pressed his lips to hers, kindly and without challenge. It was dark in the room, but Jemma’s closed eyes flashed the color white at his touch.

 

“People can’t  _ make _ each other happy, really. I know that. But if you gave me the chance to try, I’d take that chance in a heartbeat.” He pulled away with another kiss, smaller than a hummingbird, and parked back into the pile of blankets he was pretending was a bed.

* * *

 

Jemma insisted on cooking breakfast. It wasn’t her usual tea and toast, but after having met the real Mrs. Fitz, it felt only appropriate to try and reciprocate the affection that she’d brought all the way along to New York City. Unfortunately, she was not very good at cooking at all and had managed not only to undermix her pancake batter but undercook the sludge as well. 

 

Imogene ate the thing all the same. “I couldn’t let you bake in the shop if you visited, but you’d be too lovely to keep out entirely. We’d find work for you.” She winked. 

 

Jemma caught the look that Fitz gave his mother, which carried some weight that she couldn’t quite place. The two seemed to almost examine each other, casually, which was something that was never supposed to be achieved in daily life by a person of ordinary means. That was it--neither of them were ordinary. Jemma had certainly never met two people so  _ giving _ before. The two of them had to have been close, but close enough to communicate telepathically? She caught herself grinning while she looked into the frying pan at her next monstrosity. 

 

“Any big plans for tonight?” Imogene said privately behind Jemma’s back.

 

“Spending time with you and with Jem.” He whispered just as quietly.

 

Jemma’s stomach fluttered. He’d never called her that before--or at least not to her face.

 

“What about your family, Jemma?” Imogene asked as she refilled her teacup from the kettle that was waiting on the breakfast bar. “Are they coming to visit as well?”

 

“No,” Jemma measured, trying not to jump at the thought or answer too quickly. “We’re not as close as the two of you.” It was a half-lie. There had been a point in time where she and her father had been thicker than thieves. Ever since the incident in Sheffield, as Bobbi sometimes called it, there had been a canyon between them. She missed the way it felt to see his name light up on her cell phone screen.  She missed the trips she and her father took into the country to see the stars without all of the light pollution drowning out some of the most spectacular parts of nature. At the thought, Jemma suppressed a sniff.

 

Fitz’s mother made a noise through her sip of tea that resembled a hum.

 

“We’re lucky, I guess.” Fitz said.

 

Jemma turned away to hide the quiver of her chin. She took a slow breath and blinked rapidly to hide her emotion. That snotty, demanding thing. “Would you watch this, Fitz, just a second? I’ve got to retreat for a moment.” She handed him the spatula and headed to the toilet straight away to get herself together.

 

She couldn’t stay too long, she knew, or her foolish wailing would turn her eyes red. What an idiotic thing to be upset about. It wasn’t as though her father had gone. Not really. He was a ring away. She waited, leaning against the furthest wall from the door and got out whatever bits of tears had gained purchase on her eyelids, and washed her face with cold water. The bead-monkey, as usual, winked at her again. It was then that she headed back into the hall and caught the wind that had crossing in her kitchen.

 

“...just sad,” Ms. Imogene whispered halfway through a thought. “Something heavy about that.”

 

“She’s not  _ just _ sad,”Fitz defended. 

 

Jemma stopped, and against her better judgement, began to listen in.

 

“To take advantage of that, Leopold, would be a ghastly thing to do.” 

 

“She’s not just sad, Mum.” He insisted. “Did I tell you about the electro--”

 

“The brain thing?”

 

“Yes, that.”

 

“Who better else to try and fix the human brain than someone who is feeling what it can do so powerfully?”

 

Jemma gulped. How long could she stay there, waiting, before they noticed? The tears she’d had before were stayed, and she couldn’t resist twisting the fabric of her shirt sleeve with her other hand. She needed the fidget.

 

“I know,” Imogene started, her voice gaining strength and volume to match. “That you are keen on loving people around you. You’re a sensitive man. A good man. But you’ve just moved here and started a new job and have made a couple of friends, and I don’t want you to give away all of these pieces of yourself straight out of the gate.”

 

“Mum, I told you. Simmons and I are colleagues, and friends, and we have just started going on dates.” A plopping sound was heard, which was certainly the pancake flopping onto someone’s plate.

 

Jemma wiped her nose, prayed that her eyes hadn’t turned red from her interlude in the corridor, and headed back into her living area. “It’s been so nice having the two of you here to visit,” she said in the effort to mask her deep hurt. Her breath felt shallow, but she sounded fine enough.

 

Imogene turned and smiled at Jemma while she folded up Fitz’s blankets from the floor and then started on her own. The expression was not insincere. It was the same one that Daisy had given her in the cafe just a week and a half before. “You should have Leo help hang some photos or paintings to help out while he’s out of the office.” She offered.

 

Jemma took stock of her home and winced again at the plainness of it all. But if she covered the walls, what would go there? Everything alluded to something else. Images and things and thoughts, she decided, were poisonous.

 

“Ah, yes,” Fitz said, crossing the room in just a few strides and touching a tentative hand to Jemma’s shoulder blade. “I’d be happy to, if you wanted,” he said earnestly.

 

Those hands, which his mother had volunteered, were the same ones that reached for her hips in the night, had fidgeted with the pale green brain in her lab, and the same ones that curled around the flask that he kept in his work bag. Something about their touch, which migrated endlessly between certain and quivering, reminded her that Imogene was right. She was a sad sort of girl, and Fitz liked to help those sad people.

 

“How kind of you,” Jemma said, bringing a hand over her mouth in the effort to look considering instead of absolutely bloody falling apart.

* * *

  
  


In the end, there had been plenty of bickering over the best place to watch the year turn over, but the three of them ended up on the roof of Fitz’s apartment building, crowned with thick blankets to keep out the icy breeze. Imogene had suggested champagne, and Fitz had doused the suggestion immediately, suggesting warm apple cider instead as it was so cold out. They sat on the edge of the roof, a trio of penguins with Fitz in the middle, catching only slivers of glances at the famously-lit town square where thousands had gathered.

 

“I like it better this way, just the few of us,” he admitted without prompting. 

 

It was quieter. Though it was never truly quiet, it was different than swimming through large crowds of people. Only one other family had stationed themselves in the same place, on the other side of them, hungry for their own space as well.

 

The chanting began just as Jemma was sure she was about to fall asleep. She’d already pressed her temple into his shoulder and closed her eyes. 

 

Imogene, on her son’s other side, reached for his hand and squeezed. She must have been exhausted; most everyone else back home had already celebrated and fallen asleep themselves. She began to hum from her place on the cold rooftop. 

 

Fitz pressed a kiss to the crown of Jemma’s head. “I know you’d think I didn’t believe in superstition, but I know for a fact that Mack is at downstairs waiting for the clock to strike so he can be the First Foot. He’ll be blessing the flat for me,” he smirked in the glow of the night around them. “I had to bribe him a bit.”

 

“What?” Jemma chuckled, half asleep.

 

“I think I’ll need all the luck that I can get.” He explained. 

 

As the far crowd erupted into an audible applause from somewhere across the city, Fitz reached a thumb to Jemma’s chin and pulled her into a New Year’s kiss that tingled all the way to her toes.

  
  
  
  



	13. What Curls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A day will come that Jemma Simmons does not spill her bag all over the ground, but today is not that day.

Jemma didn’t talk to Fitz about overhearing his mum while the three stayed in her little flat, cramped together in what was likely “the perfect amount of space for three people.” It is amazing how much of that space can be taken up by ideas and the elephants no one talks about.

 

Instead, after Imogene Fitz had gone back home, the pair of them continued on in the New Year without speaking about Mums or about old boyfriends and worked energetically on finishing the microchip prototype--the one that could be inserted into a human body without resulting in catastrophic death like the first model surely would have. They stayed at Jemma’s lab until the wee hours of the night every day and on weekends, they ended up wrapped inside each others’ bodies on Jemma’s bed, sometimes in their full clothing and shoes, dreaming the next breakthrough. 

 

It had taken three weeks to finish the product, and while Jemma had already aligned with someone who was willing and excited to be the Baby Albert in her experiment, she still felt the need to hold the technology in her hand and feel it before she could inject it into his brain stem. 

 

“Here,” Fitz said as she held out an open palm. The pair of tweezers that held the device was small, but it could hold something even smaller: the technological piece of a piece of a neuron. 

 

“I can’t believe it,” Bobbi whispered from behind Jemma, looking over her shoulder with small planets for eyes. 

 

“It’s remarkable.” Jemma agreed. Sure, this tech was in her hand, smaller than anything the naked eye has ever seen, but it felt impossibly heavy there. Lighter than air but heavier than a cinder block.

 

“My lunch hour is over. I have to go,” Fitz said abruptly before he kissed Jemma’s cheek. “You know where that needs to go.” He took a quick glance at his watch and packed up his bag. It was a rightful gesture considering he’d been late back to work almost every day that week.  

 

“He’s made himself at home, hasn’t he?” Bobbi said after Fitz had left and she was heading back to her workstation.

 

“He likes the science,” Jemma defended. Carefully, she replaced the chip back in its original home. 

 

“And he likes you,” Daisy said from her space, her eyes still on her computer and her fingers still typing furiously to integrate her theoretical tech with the physical that had been birthed, finally, into existence. 

 

Jemma smiled, but didn’t bite. This statement required no answer. The four of them knew, but in the weeks that had passed, Jemma had also been trying to avoid talk about the question Fitz asked her while she slept on her own couch.

 

There was a look on Bobbi’s face that twisted her smile and made it hang crookedly on her face. 

 

“Are you alright?” Jemma asked in a whisper, crossing over closer to her. “It’s been a while, I know, since we talked.”

 

She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms, neglecting the medical records she was summarizing for Jemma’s subject. 

 

“Bobbi?”

 

“I’ve been thinking, and if Fitz is still working with Hunter like I know he is, then I know he’s not on staff here? Does Coulson know about him?”

 

“It hasn’t been a secret.” She defended.

 

“But explicitly,” Bobbi hissed. “Because if I remember correctly, there were about fifteen pages of non-disclosure paperwork that we all had to sign on orientation when we started here.”

 

“He’s not abusing us.”

 

“I know that,” Bobbi shrugged. “That’s not the problem. Fitz is a good guy. But maybe you should nip it in the bud with your office manager. I don’t think we’d have to scrap the project, but I’m concerned that the company won’t continue to pursue it when they find out.”

 

“Why should I have to tell him?” Jemma almost pouted.

 

Bobbi wiggled in her chair and made herself taller (as if she needed any help) and explained, “Because you’re our fearless leader.” 

* * *

  
  


“I thought he was from R&D,” Coulson said with a cocked eyebrow. He leaned onto his desk and plopped down the file someone else had given him. His office was a revolving door during that time of day, but Bobbi had insisted Jemma wait no longer to talk to him.

 

“No one from our R&D department is so clever,” Jemma said. It was true, no one was. “He’s a specialist in an advanced field of technology that is perfectly suited to my project.”

 

“You should have been--”

 

“I know,” Jemma said. She  met his eyes and didn’t blink. Years of working with him had taught Jemma that Phil Coulson did not want her to quiver under his professional scrutiny. He was far too teamwork-oriented for that. “I apologize.”

 

He pressed a hand to his forehead and closed his eyes. “I’m going to have to bring this to Fury.”

 

“I’m confident in where I stand in this scheme.” 

 

“He’ll want to hear it from me.”

 

She swallowed down a hard lump that had formed in her throat. This shouldn’t be something Coulson should have to pay for… or anyone should. It was a breakthrough in technology that could help thousands of people. It should be a celebration. “I’ll tell him that I did it without your permission.” 

 

“Tell Fury what?” 

 

Jemma turned and faced him out of fear when she heard the devil appear. “Hello, sir.”

 

Even Coulson paled.

 

“I have a feeling I know what this is about.” Fury said. “And I’ve already offered Dr. Fitz a position here, if I’m correct in thinking I do.”

 

The room filled with breaths that everyone had been holding in secret. This was excellent. This was thrilling news. Jemma’s face spread wide under the force of a smile.

* * *

 

  
  


“You didn’t tell me that Fury offered you a position at my lab,” Jemma accused as soon as she sat down at dinner across from Fitz, who nearly choked on his water from the look on her face.

 

“Hello,” he stumbled. It was evident that he had been looking not at her when she entered the restaurant they had agreed to meet at, but looking into the ceiling and thinking of something else entirely.

 

“Are you going to take the job and come over to our team? We work so much better together, after all.” She couldn’t hide her smile. Jemma was almost in the background hearing herself chatter on and on about how smashing it would be to have him around every day.

 

What had been a look of surprise morphed into something more like dread in front of Jemma’s eyes.

 

“I wasn’t planning on telling you about the offer. I’m not accepting the position.” Fitz said. 

 

“What?” Jemma demanded as she felt her expression turn sour.

 

“I don’t think that’s appropriate,” he spoke cautiously. He reached forward and sat down his glass of water with a deliberate hand. 

 

“ _ What _ ?” Jemma could feel her scoff rise to the surface so fast that it penetrated the remnants of smile she was still holding onto.

 

His gaze flitted to the window. “Once this is over, with the Prometheus Operation, I don’t expect you to want to be in such close quarters with me.”

 

“What?” Jemma stammered. On realizing she had become a broken record, she struggled to add more to challenge what was almost a threat. “What is that supposed to mean?” 

 

He looked back at her. “I’m not...It’s not supposed to sound how it will. I think I know where I’m supposed to fit into your life. That’s not in the lab. I love it there...with you, but--” he said.

 

“Fitz--” she almost shouted.

 

“But this is something different.” He gestured to the space between the two of them. “If you don’t want to be with me, I don’t want the reason to be that you’re afraid of what working together would be like if it didn’t work out.”

 

She bit her lip. She wondered whether or not she had walked right into this trap. “Why are you still thinking about this?” She spat out.

 

A tinge of something rose to his eye. “Aren’t you?” 

 

In the corner of her eye, Jemma saw a waiter approach their table and then turn away without speaking to them. What a sight the two of them must be. “This is about your fancying me?”

 

“And you fancying me. I’m not blind.” He said with his voice set firm.

 

“No,” she started, but stilled in her tracks. To deny that this was true, that would be a lie.

 

“Jemma, I’m not rushing you. I thought you’d appreciate it--me not putting you on a schedule. I’d never anyway. I didn’t want the two of us in the lab to appear as me invading your space.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice with his brow set. “I thought you’d prefer it that way.” 

 

Jemma shook her head.  _ I work better with you sharing my space. _ “Stop this.”

 

“Stop what?” he demanded in turn.

 

“Stop trying to do all the right things,” she said, her voice strained. She reached for the strap of her bag, and meant to storm off, but with a puddling sound, the bloody thing spilled all over the posh carpeting of the restaurant. 

 

Jemma smothered a groan and bent over to pick up the things littered the floor, and Fitz bent down beside her to help.

 

“What do you want from me then?” He asked without looking at her, as he scrambled to reach for something and grabbed her set of flat keys.

 

She turned from him long enough to swallow her pride. “I want you to stop putting me first.” 

 

“What?” He spat, his anger rising. 

 

She reached for her keys and Fitz palmed them faster than she could move to snatch them back. “Give those to me.” 

 

“Stop putting you first?” His voice rose in kind, and even Jemma could see the people around them turn their heads to look. “What do you suppose I should do instead?” 

 

“Quiet down,” she pleaded.

 

Fitz stood and took a deep breath. His chest rattled. “I can’t make it anymore clear, Jemma.” 

 

She reached for his hand, opened it and took the keys back. “Haven’t you? Waiting for me to come around?”

 

He didn’t answer. Fitz’s eyes burned with the icy blue that filled them when he was focused on a project. The same blue they had turned in her living room on the floor in front of the window. 

 

“Haven’t you had enough yet? Of waiting on the side and me taking you for granted while you push my science forward?” She headed for the door quickly, and he followed on her heels. 

 

They reached the sidewalk and the sky, which had begun to darken on Jemma’s walk from work, began to snow again, lightly, like baking sugar falling from a shaker. A frigid breeze caught the hem of her shirt and froze her straight to her core, stole the dreaded heat that had risen inside her chest and fed her strength like gasoline on a fire, misplaced as it was. 

 

“You want me to stop waiting for you?” He asked. Fitz was no longer holding his voice back, and it swelled in the space between snowflakes. “Rubbish!” 

 

She headed back to her flat with elongated paces, but somehow, he was still close behind. 

 

“I’m not a fool, Jemma. No matter how you think this is playing out. No matter how damaged you think you are.”

 

She choked on a sob. She prayed he didn’t hear it.

 

“I know that you’re not!” 

 

“Stop,” she whispered.

 

“Why shouldn’t I wait? If this was something else--If I knew that you didn’t feel the way that you do, I would go. But I know that’s not the truth.” 

 

Jemma shook her head as vigorously as she could without losing her step. “You have no way of knowing that.”

 

“I do, Jemma.” He reached for her elbow. 

 

She flashed back to the first night, in her apartment and the feeling of his hand curling around the back of her neck brought bitter tears to her eyes. How could he know? She wasn’t sure she even knew. In a perfect world, Leo Fitz would wait for her forever, and touch her, and curl her into his chest at night while the two of them lay in bed. Her mouth watered in concert with her eyes. 

 

“I can see it in you the same way that you see it in me. And Hunter and Bobbi see it the same. The science is sound, Jemma.” 

 

She turned back to look at him and saw tears in his eyes, illuminated by the streetlight he had caught her under. Her resolve crumbled. 

 

“Oh, Fitz,” she whispered. She could not fathom her disappointment in him, in herself. But he was not a damaged man, not in the way she was. He was a loyal man. “Please don’t.”

 

He licked his lips and shut his eyes hard, but didn’t move his hand from her arm. His grip on her softened. It felt like he was holding onto her heart.

 

She looked at him in the snow, under the yellow of the flickering streetlight. He was a man who might follow her to hell, if she let him. What a poor thing to be read just as he is written. Time slowed while he gathered himself, and once he opened his eyes again, she found herself turning into him to hold him against her, arms all around him and his cheek against her cheek.

* * *

 

 

Jemma set out to shag him as soon as she’d gotten him into the door of her flat, furiously reaching for each piece of his clothing and tossing it against the floor without notice of where the things landed, and once she’d had him bare, and tossed him on her unmade bed in the moonlight, she set on her own things while he watched her.

 

“You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he whispered. 

 

“Hush,” she urged, as she pulled the last of the things off. His voice had already pulled at the threads of her heart enough for the night. She couldn’t bear it if he wanted to talk to her throughout.

 

She climbed atop him and he reached for her hips, reverently brushing the sides of her from her waist to her knees. The room was chilled, his skin feverishly warm against the insides of her thighs. 

 

Fitz’s mouth opened with a silent groan as she sheathed him inside of her. She covered him with her lips for a moment before pressing her forehead against his, knocking softly against him as she moved her hips. 

 

His breath grew shallow against her ear, but he listened to her and didn’t speak. If he knew why, he didn’t let on to her.  

 

Her finger curled inside her palms, resting on his chest, and he held them there. She moved in as much silence as she could manage, but a whimper escaped her and he squeezed her hand.

 

“Fitz,” she moaned under her breath, unwanting him to hear her. She closed her eyes and rose, arching her back and moving deeper against him.

 

The blue light of the room hid the most of them, all limbs and skin, but when she opened her eyes again to gaze on him, she jumped, having seen him plainly mouth, his eyes squinting shut, that he loved her. 

 


	14. Venom

“This is amazing,” Daisy whispered from her place in the corner from where she watched Mike Peterson stand on his own two feet, his hand grazing a handlebar.

 

“Fantastic, Mike, take a step forward, please,” Bobbi urged at the end of the parallel bars he was scarcely using. 

 

The patient wore a titanium smile. 

 

“You’re doing great.” Bobbi complimented, professionally composed although Jemma was sure she had just as many butterflies inside floating about, tickling her from the inside out.

 

Jemma sat on the counter of the physical therapy room, beside the video camera that was trained on the training man and his coach. It was only right that Bobbi be the person to guide their subject forward. Not only was she the most qualified of all of them, she’d been in practice since the day she met Jemma. The woman named head of the project scribbled something on the last page of her last notebook. There were other ones in the lab waiting on her, different colors, but there was something about that ocean blue that she would miss.

 

The three of them watched as Mike made his way to the end of the parallel bars and stood solid, waiting for the next task.

 

“I didn’t plan on anything else, Mike. But, um, why don’t you turn in some circles and let’s evaluate your balance. We’ll think of it as a benchmark exam this time.” Bobbi stammered. Of course, the plan for the day had been to get him to the end of the equipment and back, but in practice, that had only taken a few seconds to complete.

 

Mike humored her. “Maybe next time, we’ll start with a light jog.” He laughed a little, showing off his set of pearly whites.

 

Daisy crossed in front of the camera and came to sit beside Jemma. “I wish Coulson was here to see this.”

 

“And Fitz.” 

 

“And Director Fury. Imagine the look he’d give us.” 

 

Jemma closed the blue notebook. “What do you think will come after this?”

 

Daisy shrugged. “We have plenty of things sto debug, programs to finalize, especially with the mental illness portion. Less electronics and more chemistry, I’d bet, but I’m no scientist.”

 

“Well, after all that, I mean.”

 

“We celebrate! Simmons, don’t tell me you’re already trying to move on to the next operation.” The scoff in Daisy’s voice faltered halfway through in the attempt at a joke. “We’re not even done with this one yet.”

 

Of course she was. May would be stepping in for the chemicals and Jemma would be only editing someone else in a disengaged manner without so much as a metronome to keep her awake. 

 

Bobbi would be the one rehabbing their physical patients. What would occupy her mind in the meantime? Well, she supposed no one had harnessed time travel yet. “You and Bobbi and May from neuroscience will have tons of things to tweak and perfect, but for the most part, I’m done.”

 

They watched together as their patient walked a straight line, one foot in front of the other, and both hands hovering straight out over for a safety rail.

 

“I-I don’t know. Do you want to do the stairs? What feels right to you, Mike?”

 

“This has nothing to do with Fitz not taking that job does it?” Daisy asked lightly.

 

Jemma shook her head. “No, this is just me anticipating boredom and trying to plan ahead.”

 

“You must have tons of ideas in that notebook. There hasn’t been a day that you weren’t scribbling something complex and amazing in there.”

 

Jemma blushed at her compliment. “You’re so kind, Daisy. I’ll miss working with you.”

 

Daisy roped an arm around her back and hugged her. “We’ll figure out something to keep you from getting too stale in here. Can’t have you rotting in the break room around all those week-old vending machine sandwiches. Imagine.”

* * *

  
  


Jemma curled up on Fitz’s bed and regaled to him the tale about Mike Peterson and his two finally functioning legs.

 

“That’s fantastic, Jemma,” he encouraged from his desk chair. Since his mum had come to visit and brought his possessions over from the home they used to share, the stark bedroom had become homey. In a fashion she hadn’t expected, Fitz was organized and designed. She was even more surprised to learn that he was a fan of deep, warm gold as evidenced by the lamp on his dresser, the color of his curtains, and the sextant that rested on a shelf beside the door. It seemed that each time she looked, she saw another piece of evidence of his personality that she had managed to miss before. 

 

She had grown used to scanning things when she visited his room, but found at that time something different entirely. Upon inspection of the man himself, she noticed his eyes were red and below them, dark bags had accumulated.

 

“Are you alright?” She asked.

 

He closed his eyes and leaned into his chair. “I’m alright. I’m just a little exhausted.”

 

“Hmm. I don’t think people can be ‘a little exhausted’. Those concepts are mutually exclusive.” She moved to sit on his lap, and he curled around her like a cat.

 

“I’d beg to differ,” he yawned. 

 

She took his face in her hands and examined him. “Is it work?”

 

He nodded and took a deep breath. “Lots to do, none of it challenging, but all of it time-consuming.” 

 

She felt a pang of guilt bother at her. He wouldn’t be doing such things if she didn’t make things difficult for him. He could be working in the same office as her doing more interesting things for more money and funding and… “Are you sure about the offer Fury made you?”

 

He smirked. “Yeah, I’m sure.” 

 

She cleared her throat, but what she needed to say next didn’t rise to the surface right away. “I saw you, the other night. I saw what you said.”

 

He squirmed, and patted her leg, meaning for her to take a seat elsewhere. “You saw what?”

 

“I saw you tell me that you love me.” 

 

His hands moved for the bridge of his nose. “Fuck.” He rose to his feet and turned away from her.

 

She sat back down on his bed and the rumpled quilt that rested on top. Usually, he had the presence of mind to tidy it up, but that too must have been a signal of his exhaustion. “Did you mean that?” She asked carefully, wondering if the admission had been a symptom of something similar. 

 

“Fuck. I didn’t think you would see that.” He turned back to her, his reddened eyes darting around the room and looking for a way out.

 

“Did you mean it?” She repeated.

 

He wrung his hands. “Yeah.”

 

Jemma didn’t break eye contact, but she could taste metal in her mouth. Still, it had to be talked about since she seemed to end up in his room once a week and him in hers at least twice and mostly more. 

 

There wasn’t much of her to love. They had to talk about it.

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

She laughed nervously, but stopped when she witnessed his face fall. “ _ I’m _ sorry.” 

 

He didn’t answer her, but he still stood, moving his weight from one foot to the other as if trying to stave off some type of hurt.

 

She patted the bed next to her and with hesitation, he sat down. “I’m not good at things like this,” she admitted. Things had been different long ago. She was used to being loved and cared for and did the same things for others well. It was a talent to be properly thoughtful and Jemma Simmons had cultivated that talent for years. 

 

He grimaced. “Have I scared you off?”

 

“No. I’m here today.”

 

“In a professional capacity.” He gestured to her bag, which was carrying her notes and the videotape which she had decided should be with a member of the team at all times.

 

Jemma placed a hand on the side of his face again, and pressed her lips to his, catching the bottom lip between her own and squeezing lightly for only a moment before pulling away. “A professional kiss, then.”

 

He sighed and closed his eyes. “Another two concepts that are mutually exclusive.” 

 

She wanted to tell him that she felt they could be both and they had been throughout Operation Prometheus thus far. He had perfected her plans and slept with her numerous times, both things seamlessly perfected and done with the appropriate amount of care. But she also knew that he was right. It worked in the lab because it worked in her flat. “I think you need a holiday,” she said instead.

 

“Or two.”

 

“Alright. Well, you’ll come home with me and skive off of work tomorrow, as will I.”

 

He smiled at her.

 

“Instead of taking notes and hunkering over computer screens, the two of us will lie in bed and eat ice cream and then relax with the longest bath that has ever been taken.”

 

Fitz laughed. “That sounds… horrible. Your pruny fingers touching my body? No thank you.” 

 

She took no more of his sass, and packed his things up, moving through his dresser without his permission and folding them neatly for his old brown suitcase. He watched her without commitment and lounged upon his bed while Jemma hoped he did not fall asleep waiting.

* * *

 

 

Jemma turned the key in the lock, but before she could open the door, Leo Fitz had already rested his suitcase and his work bag (he had convinced her he needed it even if he was planning on playing hooky) on the corridor carpet and took her waist, peppering her with sloppy dead-tired kisses.

 

It was a purgatory time of day in the apartment building. Most families were inside cooking their dinners or had already headed out for something similar. The space smelled of sweet sauce and bitter herbs, cooking beef and baking cakes. No one would see them snogging in that public space. Or at least that had been the thought until a neighbor down the hall slammed her door shut and commented about the two of them while taking her rubbish out. 

 

When he pulled away and reached his hand to the doorknob, his mischievous look stayed behind and decorated his already beautiful face. “Inside then.” 

 

She followed behind him carrying his work, the lighter of the two bags, and flicked on the lamp beside the door.

 

“Surprise!” A voice came from the corner opposite the door and Jemma Simmons thought she would nearly faint.

 

Even Fitz had stopped dead in his tracks, holding her keys tightly in his hand, white knuckles and all. 

 

“Mummy,” She quivered. 

 

The woman rushed her daughter and wrapped two sweater-covered arms around her in an embrace. “So glad to see you darling. I’ve been waiting in here for ages!” She stood straight up and turned to Fitz, looking him over like a loaf of bread at the baker’s that she was unsure was worth buying.

 

“Hello,” he said suspiciously, turning to Jemma with confusion.

 

“What a surprise to see you here. How did you get in?” She rushed. “Did Dad come as well?” She felt like praying.

 

Her mother shook her head. “Dad couldn’t make it this time. A work conference in France. But it was the perfect opportunity to come see you, darling!”

 

“Mum, this is Fitz,” she introduced. Had it become very cold in the building? Or had the air just been knocked out of her? 

 

He passed the keys back to their rightful owner and held out a hand for Mrs. Simmons to shake. “Nice to meet you,” he said stiffly, and for a moment, considering the suitcase that he had brought when this meeting had a different connotation entirely. 

 

“I’m Helen, Jemma’s mum, though I’m sure she’s told you already.” The woman said.

 

Jemma stood dumbstruck. Under what impression had this woman been that she was keen to simply stroll in? How on earth had she made it into the flat without a key or… she had left it unlocked again, hadn’t she? Rushing out to work to see how Mike Peterson handled the chip.

 

Fitz shrugged. No, he hadn’t heard much of anything about Jemma’s mum after the night when the bead-monkey had come to live with her. It was better that way. All he knew was that there had been an incident.

 

“Mummy, I wish you had told me that you had planned on visiting. There’s not much space here and I’ve already promised Dr. Fitz that he was welcome to have the sofa tonight since he’s come to the states to consult on a project.” She lied. She lied her arse off. 

 

Fitz yawned, deliberately or thoughtlessly. “Ah, yes, it was a very long flight.” He gave Jemma a look, but carried on with her.

 

“I do understand.” Helen said. She stiffened. “I had the same flight, though I’m surprised not to have seen you on the very same airplane.” 

 

He stammered, “Oh, I’m sure that I came in earlier. Just spent the whole day at the office, I’m afraid.” 

 

Jemma’s mother reached for her luggage, which had been waiting on her by that sofa, and pulled on the handle. “It’s a bit late for an old woman like me to go out hunting for a hotel room, but I suppose I’ll have to make it work.” She said with too much acid and a stiff upper lip. “I’ll see you tomorrow then, love.” 

 

With a flourish that was not lost on her daughter, she left and shut the door behind her.

 

“Oh jesus christ.” 

 

“Are you alright?”

 

Jemma fell down onto her chair, suddenly as exhausted as she could be. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I think we’re going to have to cancel tomorrow’s plans.” 

 

“Hey,” Fitz comforted. His heavy hand on her back felt like a weighted blanket holding her soundly. “It’s going to be alright. You’ll get through this.”

 

The vision of her mother’s bedroom flooded Jemma’s head without warning, save for the pounding in her head. The flash of the scene when she walked in, of Will’s mussed hair, and the squeal that Jemma heard before swinging that godforsaken door open.

 

The sound that erupted from her own throat without effort.

 

“I’m here for you, okay?” Fitz said.

 

Jemma snapped back to New York and to the living room of her home, the buzzing sounds of cars outside.

 

“Do you want to talk about this?” He offered when she did not speak. 

 

“I can’t.” 

 

He pulled her by her hand into the bedroom and removed her shoes again in what had become a ritual between the two of them. 

 

She struggled to keep contact with the present, but watched with her blank eyes as he undressed and put on his pyjamas and then rifled through a basket of clean clothing to pull something out for her. She dressed slowly. This had not been her plan.

 

“I don’t know where my father went when he left.” Fitz spoke quietly and stared along with Jemma into the other wall. “But sometimes, I expect him to do the same thing. Show up without warning and assume that he would have any right to me.”

 

Jemma nodded in recognition.

 

“But he doesn’t.” He finished. He asked if she wanted to turn off the light, but Jemma shook her head. Instead, he lay back into the soft bed clothes that she had just washed, and promptly fell asleep, his breathing becoming even almost instantly.

 

She smiled. It was surely an accident, the man was so sleepy.

 

Jemma stood to turn off the light he had mentioned and ventured into the living room again, where Fitz’s satchel waited on the floor by the coat rack. It took a couple of minutes to find what she was looking for, but near the bottom of the thing underneath his electronics and cords and a small bag of hand tools, Fitz’s filled flask was resting, heavy and cold.

 

Under no circumstance was she going to make it through her mother’s visit without something for her nerves. She unscrewed the top of the gold-colored thing and drank the contents down.

 


	15. You Can Never Beat the Bandit

Fitz came into the living room where Jemma had spent the night and caught wind of the smell before he even saw her. She knew this because he made a noise as soon as he made it into the hallway.

 

“What the hell?” He asked in lieu of good morning. His face screwed into disgust.

 

Jemma slurred her response from her place on the floor beside the open window. Late January cold poured in, and even a thin sheet of snow had claimed a spot on the sill. “‘S not very nice.” 

 

“Not very--Jemma, bloody hell,” He tried to pull her from the floor, but she was dead weight, and he instead made for the sofa. 

 

Jemma looked up at him with bloodshot eyes and a spinning head. “I’m sorry,” she said before bursting into chaotic tears. 

 

Of course it wasn’t okay. What was there to be done? He laid his head in his hands. He was lost for words.

 

“It’s my mum.” She stumbled.

 

“Yeah, but it’s not, Jemma, because you don’t owe her anything.” His tired eyes welled up with tears as well.

 

She shook her head furiously. This was far more complicated than not owing someone. 

 

“How much have you had?” He stood up and made for the kitchen, where the bottle of wine she had ran to the corner store for sat empty on the counter. The sickly sweet smelling bottle thunked loudly into her kitchen bin, reminding her of teenage boys throwing rocks and industrial windows dissolving into waterfalls of glass. 

 

Fitz neared where Jemma lay, eyes hungrily studying the picture of her, sad and suspiciously awake. His hip flask had been stowed at her side and he caught sight of it, brow furrowed into a W. The stopper was unplugged and the thing had been knocked onto its side long ago.

 

“Not that much, Fitz.” 

 

His eyes went glassy. “That’s my flask.”

 

“Just a kip.”

 

“That’s  _ my _ flask, Jemma!” 

 

“Oh, d-don’t be dramatic.” 

 

Fitz, standing with his hands on his hips, cursed again and then he strode into the bedroom, slamming the door.

 

Jemma stood on her unsteady feet and sauntered after him, only to find the door locked. “Fitz, c’mon. Let me in.”

 

The door burst open, and Jemma squeaked as the edge of the heavy wooden door scraped her cheek.

 

“I have to go,” Fitz said quickly, already dressed with his packed suitcase in tow. “I’m sorry about your face. Let me know if you need something.” He didn’t kiss her on the way out of the apartment. He abandoned his emptied flask on the floor, where she had stolen her first sips at the start of the night.

 

“Fitz,” she squeaked, but he had already gone, and the door had already latched behind him. Her face stung, and to make matters worse, she still hadn’t gotten any sleep.

  
  


She had half expected to wake to her mother pounding on the door, but instead, the thing that snapped her to her senses was a glass of cold water splashing her face and Lance Hunter peering over her. She had made it to her bed only a little while before, the warmth of her lover having already dissipated.

 

“Get up, love.” He said stiffly as he sat the glass on her dresser. “We’re taking a trip.”

 

“No,” Jemma groaned, already feeling the threads of a hangover cloud her head. “Not going anywhere.”

 

“Yeah, you are.” 

 

Instead of the shouting she wanted to do, she wiped her wet face on her  scratchy blanket and tucked under, careful to roll over to the dry part of her bed. 

 

Hunter tore back the blanket and poured a second glass over her.

 

She yelped, feeling the sting of the cut on the side of her face. Feeling the reminder of earlier in the morning.

 

“I have made sentry at the door of your flat for the past hour waiting on you to wake up to my very insistent knocking and you haven’t so we are going now.” 

 

“What?” She muttered, noncommittally. 

 

He sat on the edge of her bed. “Bobbi is busy with the work you are  _ wagging _ off. Fitz called me to deal with this because he doesn’t know how, the poor lad. And I have things to do today, so you are tagging along.” 

 

Jemma cursed at him. “I’m not following you to your bloody AA meeting, Hunter.” 

 

He scoffed. “I didn’t ask you to. This isn’t an intervention, Jemma. This is babysitting.”

* * *

 

“It was just over thirty days, huh?” 

 

“Thirty four,” she answered, staring out the window at the people walking beside them in the dense traffic. People in their dark raincoats in stark contrast to the snow that had piled on the sidewalks.

 

“And I caught you--Fitz caught you, I ought to say--before this one turned into a real bender, eh?” 

 

“It wouldn’t have.”

 

“Well, we all like to think that. It’s rarely ever true.”

 

She didn’t answer; he was likely right and admitting that wouldn’t help her case a bit. 

 

“If all you need is some time on the outside of yourself, I could drop you off in the woods and let you find your way back the the city, eh?”

 

Jemma groaned.

 

“Relax! Was only kidding.” Hunter said. 

 

He drove until they came upon his dingy little office and she walked with him as he strolled through, catching glances of brown and worn tread on the carpet and the flickering lights as she tried to find Fitz among the filthy offices. The place smelled of molding books and somehow, strangely, of rotting fruit. Enough to make her sensitive stomach turn.

 

“What are we doing here?” She asked her nanny.

 

“I’ve got some blueprints to pick up and drop off.” He answered.

 

She frowned. There had been a glimmer of hope in her that this was an intervention for someone else… someone who she wished was in the wrong rather than herself and who she supposed ultimately did not deserve it.

 

Hunter stopped in a tiny office on the fourth floor and pulled a file from an immaculately-cleaned corner desk decorated with a gold lamp, a fossil of a computer, and a considerable amount of books, all stacked with a useless paper-weight on top, as if the monstrous things might be blown away in a gust of wind. “Ah, here,” he mumbled before turning and heading back out in a rush with a cardboard document tube.

 

And then Jemma saw the photo taped to the front of the old computer’s monitor and gasped, having seen an image of herself in a place where she did not belong. It was there that she slept, nestled in the forest green quilt from Leo Fitz’s bed. 

* * *

  
  


She wasn’t sure why she continued to follow Hunter as he went about his daily chores. He went for a long while without talking to her, showing his security badge to various entities, both government and otherwise, gesturing with his thumb at Jemma to let them know she would be tagging along: A duckling at his mighty feet. There had been a million opportunities to simply walk away, but she followed him obediently.

 

Lunch came and passed and he didn’t stop to eat. Dinner was fast approaching and Jemma was no longer hungover, but she sniffed for something stronger than the wine she had drunk the night before.

 

Once the afternoon came, and they sat back down in the seats of his car, Hunter removed the phone from his pocket. “This thing has been nothing short of demanding all day. And I’ll give it back to you,” he said as he pressed it into her hand. “So that you can try and and fix this.”

 

“I don’t know about that,” she said. “Maybe you shouldn’t trust me with it.” It didn’t feel right to be given this power.

 

He smirked. “Aye, well, I’m right here to watch you. For now at least.”

 

Jemma eyed the phone, and hesitantly turned it back on with a chime. There was a dozen missed calls from her mum, but not a single one from Fitz. She felt her face fall and scrambled to hide it before Hunter could catch her, though he would know exactly why.

 

She scrolled through the old messages, and saw that she had even received some of those from Helen Simmons. But her father hadn’t tried to reach her. Neither had Bobbi. With a bite of her lip, she tossed the thing into her bag without spending another second on the screen. 

 

“Alright?” 

 

“No,” Jemma answered. Even she was surprised at the dryness in her voice. “You’ll take me somewhere?”

 

Hunter cut his eyes at her, “Where to?” 

 

She shook her head. There was not a single safe place over the expanse of the galaxy. She needed to  _ go _ rather than to  _ arrive _ . “To the Ostrich,” she laughed weakly.

 

He didn’t dignify that.

 

“Or to the lab. Just take me to the lab.” 

 

The night crept around her slowly as he agreed and drove her there, the way a winter cold does. Even in the warmth of Hunter’s car, waiting in the parking area underground beneath the office, her toes drained of blood.

 

“Jemma, can I leave you here?” He asked, one hand on her arm. The loaded question was pointed straight at her heart.

 

“Yes,” she answered. Of course it was likely an awful idea, which she realized as soon as she stood up out of the car and felt like she was getting away with something dodgy. She walked quickly to the door and let herself in with the intent to be there for the rest of the night.

* * *

 

 

The lab was near empty. She felt the thinned presence as she walked through the blue-lit corridor toward the bio-lab. The sharp smell of antiseptic tickled her nose and soothed parts of her heart. Once she made it to her workspace and flicked on the buzzing overhead, she noticed a test-tube propped against her keyboard with a single dandelion inside and a note in Daisy’s scribbly writing:  _ Missed you today. _

 

Metallic taste melted into Jemma’s mouth. Was it possible to blame herself some more?

 

The computer was still on. She logged in and checked her email. Read the latest on the Listserv. She saw nothing interesting enough to garner her attention. 

 

“You’re here,” a small voice piped from the arch of the door. Fitz leaned there, hands in his pockets, face as soft as a puppy’s ear. 

 

Jemma turned to him right away. “Fitz, I’m so sorry, I didn’t…” but she stopped, suddenly concerned about whether or not she should be apologizing at all. Was it a mistake to be played or to lose a rigged carnival game? 

 

“Bobbi and I had lunch. She told me some secrets.” He said. His terse sentences felt like darts heading straight for her. 

 

“I reckon they’re the kind that we’re going to have to talk about.”

 

He crossed the room to her and stopped short by Bobbi’s working area. “You could have told me, you know. I would have listened to you, believed you.”

 

Could she have told him? The stranger who had pried things open, come in without warning, and built a skyscraper inside her brain? 

 

“I know that I can trust you. It’s not that. Please don’t think this is about you. You’re perfect, Fitz.” She said, blinking something away with rapid pace.

 

“Hm. Sounds like a load,” he sauntered closer with a smirk and took her hand in his. 

 

Warmth drained in and considered her body, starting with her cheeks and trailing through her, a sprig of English ivy lit aflame. “It is considerably embarrassing to think that I…”

 

“No,” he started. “You mustn’t believe that the betrayal of others is a reflection of you.” 

 

How easy it was to say that.

 

“I don’t believe that. And Bobbi neither.” 

 

She cleared her throat and scrambled for a breath that bubbled just below her collarbones. “And you continue to give me credit that I’m not due because at the the end of the day, it was me waking up on the floor in the bloody living room.”

 

He dropped her hand. “And it was I who brought a filled flask into your apartment without even a thought.”

 

“Aren’t you a doctor?” Jemma tried to joke. “Witty enough not to.” 

 

“That singed me, Jem.” He said plainly. 

 

She took him in her arms and laid her head against his shoulder. “I’m so sorry. You said it yourself about others and betrayal.” The feeling was hefty. It left her like winged anvils, bumping all sides on the way out. It wasn’t proper for him to blame himself. Not when he was the same man catching glimpses of her at all hours of the day and turning down dream jobs, and… 

 

He kissed her cheek and pulled his arms around her waist, wide hands occupied with the small of her back. 

 

“Fitz, I don’t know how much of this I can do.”

 

“Nonsense--”

 

“You could do better.”

 

“I couldn’t.” He whispered and looked through the floor.

 

The need to argue was flaming orange and constricting. She sighed and allowed it to flog her without giving it entry to her heart.

 

“My father, he drank. Did it the nasty way, where all of your emotions swim to the surface and you do things that you don’t regret even though you should.”

 

Sounded too familiar to her.

 

“He used to tell me I was worthless. I still think he meant it. And I still wonder if those thoughts were the product of a bottle or born of a real suspicion that I couldn’t be… what I am now.”

 

“A brilliant man,” Jemma said.

 

Fitz kissed her cheek again. “Nice of you, but I was thinking something more along the lines of a very humble and ridiculously handsome Scottish lion.” 

 

Jemma laughed in spite of herself. 

 

“I wish I hadn’t left you alone last night. I wish I’d been able to stay awake with you and tell you that you are stronger than your fears.” He smiled with something sad in him.

 

What did one say when the person that pangs your insides apologizes for your mistakes? “Fitz, you owe me nothing either. You musn’t be sorry for my actions.”

 

“Yeah, well I can promise you none of this is over quite yet, but here I am. I figure I’ll stay around awhile and witness the panning-out. So what are the next steps, Dr. Simmons?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You all are so very sweet to me. Thank you for your kudos and comments and thank you so much for reading! <3


	16. Thoughts for Copper

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! I'm back :)

Jemma studied her fingernails. She had bitten her pinky nail until it was just a stub on the end of a finger, which she had admittedly gnawed on just as much. She had every right. Fitz had gone that morning to take care of personal errands and she at in her empty quiet apartment in what could only be described as horror, waiting for the world to light on fire and smolder at her feet in hot ash.

 

Helen Simmons wasn’t simply going to go away.

 

She had called again, already twice, and left messages that her daughter made a point to leave unheard. It had been a breaking point; a line had been crossed. Her personal space invaded by someone with dubious intentions.

 

Even sitting alone in her flat, Jemma was afraid to turn on music, lest someone hear her and know for certain that she was inside. For now, she was almost invisible.

 

Bobbi had texted too, her message short and punctuated with emojis of various flora, which would have been charming any other day, but felt like a threat. A visit from Bobbi would have been the same thing as the music--a signal to others that she was home, that she was hiding. _Good morning! I hope you’re feeling better today. Call if you need me; know my limits._

 

That tough love, again, even though it hadn’t gone that poorly, not really.

 

Jemma’d spent most of the day holed up in the dry bathtub with a book. She ate a biscuit at lunch time. She must have had forty cups of tea. It had been a long time since she’d had desire to pick up fiction, but she devoured The Fellowship of the Ring almost too quickly. When she looked up after it was over, she noted that she couldn’t even see into the hallway for the lack of the light. Somewhere in between the pages the night had come and claimed… that was dramatic. It got late; too much Tolkien. She found herself scowling and heading back into the lounge to check the damage in her voicemail.

 

 _Curry?_ Fitz texted at 1 o’clock.

 

 _It’s fine! Maybe dinner, then?_ He texted at 3:30.

 

Jemma checked the time. It was already 7 o’clock, and her stomach, now educated on how much time had passed since that lone biscuit, complained loudly. She pulled on her boots and pressed his number to call him, pulling her coat over her lounging clothes and her bag onto her shoulder. He’d seen her worse in a hundred different ways. She didn’t need to get dressed any better. “Are you still waiting for an answer?” She greeted with a smile when he picked up.

 

“Wasn’t planning on it at this point but I’d still love to. Sounds better than the soggy sandwich I just began eating.” He smiled back. His keys jingled in the background.

 

“You wouldn’t believe what I’ve spent the day doing.” Jemma began, locking her door behind her after a quick inspection of anyone lingering in the hall. She described in broad concepts her nest in the tub and having forgotten the whole day, but she did not mention cowering in the quiet and dark because that was unbecoming.

 

Once she’d hit the street, still talking to Fitz, she was already laughing.

 

“Jemma?”

 

She turned around to face the voice and expected to see someone from the lab. It was a familiar voice, but she didn’t place it right away.

 

The tips of her toes went numb first, and then her fingers. “Will?” Her hand fell slack at her side dragging her mobile with it.

* * *

  


_Will stopped to pick up her spilled coffee though it was all a lost cause. Whipped cream, a rare treat, had stained the soft light brown suede of his shoe and there was not a snowball’s chance in hell that it was coming out._

 

_“I think this is yours,” he said with an unexpected laugh. His face spread wide with the effort._

 

_“So sorry!” Jemma rushed, pulling a napkin from the cafe out of her bag and trying foolishly to mop up the drink from his shoe in the middle of the busy sidewalk. Around them, people were rushing to work and scoffing at this man and woman stopped dead in their tracks in the way._

 

_He leaned down toward her and took the napkin from her hand. “It’s too late. It’s not worth worrying about anymore. I needed new ones anyway.”_

 

_She winced. He wasn’t a real New Yorker, she was sure. “I--” she started and was promptly stopped._

 

_“You didn’t even spill it on me! Just the sidewalk. It was the backsplash that did it.” He smiled at her again with his whole mouth, teeth and all, and Jemma Simmons thought she might faint then and there. Her blood had all pooled somewhere other than her head._

* * *

  


“There you are.” He started, closing the space between them and wrapping her in an embrace she did not have time to dodge.

 

She felt sick. Remembering Fitz on the line, she mumbled “I’ll ring you right back,” and hung up.

 

“Your mom called me. She’s worried sick.”

 

“And she’d call _you_ about that, yeah?” Jemma spat. Where had that venom come from, she wondered. That certainly was not her voice. Jemma Simmons spoke to others with diplomacy. Though she had lost touch for a while, she was still tactful.

 

Will grimaced. “She was running through people left and right and couldn’t get an answer, she said. Called half of New York and part of Jersey.”

 

“Alright then.” She didn’t believe that. Will was the first on her list, of course.

 

“I was coming by to check in on you for her.”

 

“Don’t. I’m fine.” Jemma made her way in the direction she had planned, though she was sure there was no way she was going to stomach any dinner.

 

Will was following behind. “Are you running away from me?” It was unmistakable condescension that swam in his voice--without even an effort.

 

“I have plans.”

 

“What should I tell her?”

 

“Nothing,” Jemma scoffed. “You shouldn’t have her number. You shouldn’t be talking to her. My father would be furious if he knew.”

* * *

  


_Will sat, face down on the cold granite of the bar, head wrapped in his arms. “They aren’t going to like me, are they?”_

 

_“Oh, posh, they will. Well, Daddy won’t. He’s never liked any of my friends but Bobbi, but it would be impossible to win him over anyway. Unless you talk to him for a long while about the petrol industry.”_

 

_He groaned. “I don’t know anything about that.”_

 

_“You may want to study up,” she encouraged with a wink. “It’s a free vacation for you, and the flight is long enough that you have time for more than one fascinating documentary.” She slapped her luggage shut and started on reorganizing his suitcase. He was awful at packing._

 

_“What about your mom?”_

 

_“Just be polite to her,” Jemma shrugged without looking up from her task. “There’s nothing to worry about.”_

* * *

  


Will reached out with a quick arm and grabbed her elbow.

 

“Don’t touch me,” she shrugged him off without even looking. That was a familiar feeling, to be touched there that way; it was a feeling he didn’t deserve to invoke.

 

“Look Jemma,” he was still tight on her heels. “I know I fucked up, okay? I just--I just wanted to make sure that you’re alright. She called me and she was worried, so I got worried, too.”

 

In her head, a film played. First, she’d reach out and slap him right across the cheek, and then she’d tell him off without an effort, and then she’d walk away without looking back like a movie star wearing velvet-red lipstick.

 

“I heard about the drinking.”

 

Oh, ‘the drinking’. She held in a groan, couldn’t give him the satisfaction of hearing it. A phrase that had grown so, so old. She turned long enough to scrunch her face into a disapproving scowl. So Will Daniels suddenly cared, did he? Where had he been for the last seven months, then?

 

“I struggled too, you know.” He begged.

 

“Quite right.” She replied, dripping with sarcasm. “Getting off with your girlfriend’s mum--the height of struggle, that.” For full effect, she turned on her heel and squared to him, eye level with that man-turned-mouse. At least he’d had the decency to shrink.

 

He winced. Will winced, and even in an expression as gruesome as the one he made under her glare, his dimples appeared. “I’m sorry, for the record.”

 

“The record isn’t open anymore.”

 

“I tried to come back, you know, a dozen times and tell you how awful I felt. Things happen. We make mistakes.”

 

She didn’t bother responding. He was right--they did make mistakes, and she was already doing her best to atone for hers with someone else.

 

“Things aren’t the same now as they were then.”

 

“Doesn’t matter,” she said under her breath. It was not a comment for him. It was for her to remind herself, because lit up in the drowned-out light on the street, his eyes glowed blue. It was a reminder that they were not, because Will’s eyes were warm brown.

* * *

  


_In the room, above the lightswitch by the door, Jemma had pasted a cut out picture from her old science book. It was a cheap thing tossed into a bin and placed outside the local library on the sidewalk, but Jemma had taken it home. It was worth a read, really, because if nothing else, the old diagrams would be fun to correct._

 

_After the chapter on punnett squares, there was a chapter on animal biology, and on that first page was a photo of a chocolate labrador retriever bouncing along in the sun. The dog looked healthy and immaculate and happy. She found herself dreaming of the dog night after night until she cut out the photo long after the book had been read through and discarded in a box in the attic._

 

_That dog could be her dog, she thought. He could go with her and her dad when they went out to the countryside to spend time among the stars and he would fetch things and walk with her while she explored the woods._

 

_“This is Steven,” Jemma said with flourish as she led Will through her old childhood bedroom on tour, where the lab still waited eternally in motion. He was named after Captain America, who had been Peggy Carter’s best friend and since it was not sensible to name a boy dog Peggy, she supposed that was the next best thing. She had to laugh as she thought back. What a silly child she had been._

 

_“The famous Steven,” Will laughed along with her. His eyes pinched at the sides, hiding the familiar color of his eyes (and Steven’s fur) with their squint. She’d told him the story at least four times before. His mouth molded into a smirk before her, his canine teeth flashed out of the corner of his mouth and sent a shiver down her back. It reminded her of their last night before flying to Sheffield when his teeth had nipped at her earlobe._

* * *

  


“I wanted it to work out,” Will said. “I thought we’d be stronger than… _that_.” The incident.

 

She met him squarely and formulated the answer to that insult carefully, but once she opened her mouth--

 

“Jemma,” Bobbi Morse called firmly. She was standing by the corner, arm in arm with Hunter. She likely wasn’t there to check up on her, but oh how the planets had aligned. The space between the three of them felt monolithic.

 

Behind them, Fitz peeked out, face hesitant with his signature scrunched nose, and hands stuffed in the pockets of his peacoat.

 

She turned to them and then quickly back at Will. “You ought to leave my family alone.”

 

“Well,” he took a card from his wallet and handed it to Jemma, and she reluctantly reached out to take it, unsure anyway what it was. Her hand moved without accord. “You can reach me when you want.”

 

She met up with the trio of people who had been giving looks to each other and left Will in her wake. But she couldn’t drop the card. That would be littering. She shoved the paper into the back pocket of her lounging trousers.

* * *

  


Through dinner, which they took as a foursome, there was no talk of them finding Jemma caught transfixed by her old boyfriend. The time would come when she had to answer for that look, the one of focus that she knew had been scribbled all over her as she spoke to him in the dark in front of her apartment building. Surely they would all have questions about it. Anyone with two brain cells would know they had stumbled upon a suspicious scene.

 

Nothing that was going to follow that moment was going to be as easy as grabbing onto Fitz as he agreed to follow her into hell. She had predicted this, though, and unfortunately, so had Imogen Fitz.

 

She didn’t tell him about eavesdropping on his mum and he as the woman assured him that he was a good man and that he didn’t have to try and save just any old cat from any old tree. He wouldn’t take that well. If only she’d thought to prepare.

 

Bobbi had the decency to keep her thoughts non-verbal and only cut her eyes at Jemma over their plates as they ate and Jemma picked at her food. She hugged her goodbye afterward, but she knew there would be talk later and it would be pointed. Bobbi was not a snake, but she could bite like one.

 

Fitz walked Jemma home after.

 

“I don’t want to go back home.”

 

“I don’t think I would either if I were in your situation,” Fitz agreed. He’d been awfully silent, even when Bobbi had mentioned the Operation and how things had been going in the lab with Mike Peterson.

 

“It sounds like the lad’s made great strides in his training,” Hunter had punned with the worst kind of look on his face: Dad with an awful joke, but Fitz did not even make a face at him, let alone laugh.

 

Fitz reached for her hand and took it firmly in a weighted gesture. There was something in the air aside from the chill, and Jemma hadn’t the heart to address it.

 

Right. She hadn’t slept properly in what felt like days, and the sleep she managed to grasp had been fitful. “Your apartment? Please?” She asked, and he agreed.

 

They had a cup of tea together in the kitchen in the quiet, Mack having gone out somewhere with Elena, and tucked in together in the emerald green and gold bedroom that Fitz kept tidied up. He pooled warmly around her and they lay in the room with only the noise of his ceiling fan above them to break the tension.

 

It began predictably.

 

“Jemma?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“How long has it been since all of that with your mum and with him?” He asked.

 

“Several months. The better part of a year.” She whispered back. They were alone and he was finally brave enough to question it. The conversation in theory had fluttered into her psyche several times and touched down on tiptoe before scuttling off again. If Jemma were a better person, she thought, it would have stayed away for good.

 

Fitz waited, started and stopped more than once. “Do you still see him?”

 

“No,” she said quickly. “Outside my flat--that was the first time since I forced him out, and only long enough to…” What was it? Nothing had been accomplished.

 

“So he wasn’t with you today, right?”

 

“Of course not,” she answered. Her heart was a racehorse. Would he think she was lying?

 

“Ah, okay.” He leaned against her and wrapped an arm around. “And what…what was his last name? Again?”

 

“Um, Daniels. Will Daniels.” Jemma could feel Fitz’s tremble against her.

 

He cleared his throat. “So, is he by chance a scientist as well? Maybe an engineer or something?”

 

“Oh no. He’s nowhere near as intelligent as you, Fitz.” She said in truth. She was crossing her fingers that he wasn’t trying to draft a venn diagram of the two of them. As far as lovers went, there was no comparison, right?

 

“I know him.” Fitz said. “I know him, he works with us.”

 

“What?”  



	17. Break My Nose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Read: Jemma Simmons almost has it together??

It was a bad feeling. All at once, in the same week, things had come together for create the perfect storm. She deserved this. Her mother, her ex, her work. It didn’t seem right, but she supposed it was fair. Bobbi hadn’t spoken to her for days, not since she saw Jemma with Will outside of her building. At work, she was always with Mike in the room where they did physical therapy, and it didn’t take Jemma too long to realize that she was doing her notes from her laptop at home instead of even staying to complete them in the lab. 

 

Mum had gone off back to the UK, which Jemma’s dad, whom she finally had the courage to ask, had confirmed. She knew she could trust him, but wasn’t sure she could trust herself in telling him about the phone call her mother had made to Will.

 

“Jemma? Are you listening?” Daisy asked. She had gotten comfortable on the counter, legs crossed like a child, and holding a Red Vine between her fingers like a cigarette.

 

“No, I’m sorry, what did you say?” She shook herself out of her head. It was just the two of them in the lab then, a nasty flu going around that the others had been too stubborn to vaccinate for, so of course the humming noise had been Daisy and of course she had been talking to her.

 

Daisy gave her a chiding look, but kept whatever thoughts she had secret. “Was asking what your plans are for Valentine’s day.”

 

“None, I hadn’t even remembered it was coming up until you said something. What about you?” 

 

“I,” Daisy drum-rolled, “am having a party at my new apartment and think you should come. I’m inviting some other people over too, but it’s going to be fun. We’ll all have a good time and think only about video games and slaying evil.”

 

Jemma nodded without commitment. It was kind of her to throw a party on a holiday when people tended to feel so alone. A very Daisy-ish thing to do. But there were things that were at virtually every adult party that it was imperative for her to avoid.

 

“There will be pizzas and stupid party games, too. To be honest, I haven’t given much thought to much else. Decorations or anything.” Daisy finished her Red Vine and pulled another from an enormous package.

 

“Hm, it sounds very cute.” 

 

“Right. So you’re coming?” 

 

Jemma checked the calendar. Recently, things ran together in a cosmic blur and other than the day of the week, she wasn’t sure where she was in time. “Short notice, eh?” 

 

“Four days is long enough. It only takes a second to get ready for and decorate, it’s the drumming people up to attend--or guilting them into it,” Daisy wiggled her nose “that takes the most time.”

 

She hadn’t thought of how Valentine’s Day was going to go with Fitz. They hadn’t spoken about very seriously dating and maybe he wouldn’t want to with the suspicions he was trying to hide about her old Valentine. After the two of them had figured out that Will was managing security guards at Fitz’s office, he’d been quieter about things. 

 

“Sure, Daisy, I’d love to go.” Jemma smiled. It did feel good that she had invited her. She could probably manage a few hours of exposure, couldn’t she?

 

Daisy returned her expression and hopped off the counter to head back to her workstation. “Great. I’ll text you my address later.”

 

She went back to her work, thinking silently about the article that she had begun writing a few days before about the Prometheus Operation. The email had gone around the ListServ that anyone who had been a part of the project should begin their work and send it to Jemma as soon as they’d finished formulating their thoughts, but no one had done so yet and she felt the need to pioneer the effort. 

 

_ We should have lunch, _ Fitz texted. He had a knack for popping in at the best sort of times. He lit up her phone most frequently when thoughts of him distracted her from working.

 

She picked up and texted him back. It was past noon, which meant that he intended it soon.  _ Of course. Meet me or pick me up? _

 

_ Meet you. The deli a block over from your office. I’m already on my way.  _

 

She popped off from her paper and packed up, making sure that her lab mate knew she would be back later.

* * *

  
  


“Are you doing alright?” Jemma asked over her bowl of soup. Before her, Fitz’s eyes had turned a light red, his face flushed, and he looked spent.

 

He picked at the crust on the bread of his sandwich with nervous fingers. “I’m fine,” he answered, “just don’t feel well, is all.” 

 

“How is work? How is your mum?” She asked in the effort to wake him up enough to talk or eat or something. Anything was better than just sitting there looking depleted.

 

He nodded. “Fine. Mum’s good. Just found an ancient recipe for buns that she likes.” He dragged his spoon through his own bowl of chili and Jemma realized that he hadn’t had even a bite of it.

 

Jemma drank a spoonful of her lunch to model . “We’ve got to talk about something, don’t we?” As soon as the words left her mouth, she pushed her bowl away. 

 

He looked at her with tired puppy dog eyes, a basset hound. “I’ve been thinking about things, dealing with them.”

 

“It’s exhausting,” Jemma said in what she hoped was a comforting voice.

 

Fitz nodded and looked into the formica of their deli table.

 

She swallowed. “You can’t spend your time thinking on my life so much.”

 

“Well--Jemma--I don’t mean that’s the only--”

 

“No, I’m sure that I’m right.” She held up a hand in the air in a pause.

 

He leaned his head in his hands and waited for her to continue, unable to even put up a fight. 

 

Oh, it was pitiful. “Please don’t. I know that you wanted to follow me through this, and I agreed to let you, but it’s not fair.”

 

“It’s not--”

 

“Fitz. Please.” Jemma said. She hid the slight tremor of her lips by turning away. This was inevitable, wasn’t it? That he would grow tired of her?

 

“No--”

 

She looked into the soup and started down at a single sprig of broccoli that peeked out of the top of her bowl.

 

“It’s Will, Jemma.” Fitz said. He reached for her arm and settled on it firmly. As tired as he was, he was also sturdy.

 

Jemma met him and canvassed his face, the clench of his jaw, looking for hesitation, which she did find in excess. His eyes were as soft as ever, but his face was all angles. He sat there a man who had become sick of her the way that all men seemed to eventually. Her pulse rushed in her ears.

 

“Right.”

 

“I see him now every day that I go into work, there at the front door, escorting guests past my office, practically everywhere. And all I can do is think about the business card that I found on your floor that I--that I watched him hand to you.”

 

The business card. She’d forgotten about that. She’d even laundered the lounge pants where she’d stuck the thing without a second thought, and didn’t check to get it out so she could put it in the bin. “I didn’t take it because I wanted it.”

 

“You took it because he handed it to you, right?” 

 

“I don’t know. I think--yes.” She stuttered.

 

He took a long deep breath. “And that’s just as good. You keep holding onto things because of who gives them to you and it shows an allegiance that is evidently misplaced.” There was a plethora of supportive evidence.

 

Her moment of thought to find a reply was accosted by a flash in her vision of the bead-monkey that still lived in her medicine cabinet. Was this a metaphor, too? 

 

“Please don’t talk to me like you are so flawless,” Jemma begged. She knew how accusatory it could sound. “I have my problems, and I’m still figuring out what some of them are, but please don’t do that.”

 

“Don’t talk to me as if I’ve done something wrong,” Fitz said. He removed his hand from her arm. His face folded before her in mad entropy. His words left him like a curse.

* * *

  
  


When she returned, her home smelled like garbage, old perfume bottles from the seventies, too much patchouli. Spaces change when you are alone. 

 

In the thick silence that lingered between too-loud neighbors and clanging radiators, things echoed into themselves and Jemma counted on two hands the number of people who decided they were finished with her. Leo Fitz was only one of a group. When he left, he did not do it as an ultimatum. Instead, this gesture was meant to be clean and gentle and he had been thinking of this since the moment he saw her with Will. It wasn’t a misunderstanding, which was the part that stung the most. It hurt more than knowing that he had agreed to stay with her through this difficulty, and couldn’t. Or didn’t. This new disappointment did not clatter, but sank through her like a stream of cold water bouncing on the crown of her head and rolling down the length of her body, top to toe.

 

Her cell phone rang, and she looked with hope that it was him and that he had changed his mind, but instead, the caller ID was all Daisy.

 

“Hello,” she said, hearing the blandness in her voice as she picked up.

 

“Hey, it’s me. I was wondering what your weekend plans are. Busy?” She asked.

 

Jemma took a deep breath. “I suppose not.” She took a seat on her sofa. 

 

“Could you do me a favor? I need some help doing the shopping for the party. I don’t want to be rushing at the last second.”

 

“No,” Jemma cleared her throat. “I don’t think that’s a good idea right now.”

 

“Oh. Well, why not? I could really use your company.” Daisy encouraged, all too cheerful. She sounded like she was surrounded by people, probably on the train headed somewhere fun and giddy to be talking to anyone at all.

 

Should she talk about it to anyone? Certainly at some point the last person would become bored of picking her out of deep holes. Fitz had. He had and he was always rescuing stray cats out of alleys, as his mother had so kindly put it. “I’ve been broken up with. Not sure how much time I want to spend shopping for valentines.”

 

Daisy paused. “That’s a good point. I’m so sorry, Jemma.”

 

She gulped and realized that she wasn’t getting any air. “I’m going to go. Maybe we could do something different later.” She tried to sound fine, despite not being able to breathe and hung up before Daisy got the opportunity to reply. 

 

The fire escape where she had to was windy and the night cut through her clothes like a fine piece of paper, scratching each part of her skin that it could find purchase. She leaned against the building and listened to the sound of cars in the city below.

* * *

 

Fitz didn’t call her anymore, and she hadn’t left anything at his apartment to claim she wanted back from him, so she couldn’t call him either. Jemma managed to keep her face taut and continue to work for the next week without mentioning him, although she thought of him often. She remembered the curiosity and satisfaction on his face as he toyed with the holotable constantly. Interns strolling through the office corridors carried cardboard tubes of blueprints, and unknowingly stabbed her in the stomach with the reminder of the photo taped to his old desktop at work. They say that is the most painful way to bleed out. 

 

The bead-monkey no longer grinned at her, but poked fun instead, and she left him there to watch her brush her teeth and ridicule her because it felt like the right thing to do--to pull out the hurt, stuff it back in, and make it linger. She wondered if he thought of her as often as she thought of him. 

 

Valentine’s day passed slowly in a manner similar to a bad dental exam. Jemma Simmons had only ever gotten one cavity before in her life, but it felt eerily alike. She attended Daisy’s party as a good sport, but did not enjoy herself and she particularly did not appreciate the attentions of a tall, dark, muscular man following her from the buffet to the television room.

* * *

 

“You haven’t spoken to Will, have you? Since you and Fitz...” Bobbi asked a few days later while the two of them sat in a private corner of the very same cafe where she and Hunter cornered her about drinking. 

 

“Of course not,” Jemma said. She took a long sip of her coffee and tried not to look suspicious. She wasn’t lying. But she hadn’t been lying to Fitz about it either and he had still construed the situation as intimate and in the end, the honesty was part of the end anyway. “Does he still come to your place to watch football with Hunter?” She asked as a segue. 

 

Bobbi’s mouth pursed. “Why don’t you just ask him yourself?”

 

She held in a scoff. “He wouldn’t want to talk to me.” 

 

“He asks me about you sometimes. Hunter, too, even though he hasn’t seen you in a while.” Bobbi intimated, looking into her cup.

 

Jemma wanted to ask more, to pry each thought out of her like a tissue from a box, knowing that another thought would simply pop back out at the ready. She tried hard not to. Instead, the studied the cables of her sweater and the thick beige yarn that she had wrapped herself in earlier that morning. She picked things out more carefully. Surely, she could mitigate the horrors of the day if she chose the right armor. The bead-monkey could not see through walls.

 

“Aren’t you going to see him at that convention anyway?” Bobbi asked. She eyed Jemma from the side, mouth no longer pursed but stabile all the same.  

 

“What convention?” Jemma asked before she remembered that she was supposed to attend this year in Atlanta that she hadn’t yet looked into and didn’t think was too important anyway. She cursed. “I forgot about that.”

 

“You know that Coulson invited him, right? To give a presentation with us about the Op.” 

 

“No. Didn’t even know that we were supposed to give a presentation.”

 

Bobbi laughed so low the sound was almost imperceptible. “This is a far cry from the drunk Jemma that I knew a few months ago, and yet you are still not back on top of things the way you were a few years ago.” 

 

Right. Well. There were plenty of other things that she was singularly focused on--like finishing the re-do of her flat and the avoiding her Mum. That part she was still managing to side-step, largely due to her Dad’s influence and close eye.

 

“Yeah, anyway, Fitz agreed to come and apparently he was supposed to be there anyway with his work, so you’ll only be able to dodge him for so long.”

 

Jemma leaned back in her chair and tried to think of every possible way she could feign influenza, and without even a look, Bobbi seemed to read her mind.

 

“I’m not letting you get out of this.” She leaned into her friend with her eyes pointed, and Jemma was reminded again how powerful Bobbi Morse was.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You wanted more angst right? More angst?


	18. 505: Theory and Application

It happens in a strange way. The pip first falls from the fruit-bearing tree and is carried in the body of another organism, a complicated and much perfected mechanism that serves to preserve life in perpetua. In any other world, Jemma knows that the same laws of physics that govern her life may not apply. She arrives in Atlanta, Georgia with Daisy in tow, and by then, a seed has found root in her brain and grown enough to blossom. 

 

The two of them rode in glass elevators that were swollen with people up to the top third of their hotel building, and  watched as people on the ground floor shrank first into ants and then into pips beneath them before the lift came to a subtle stop. Though neither of them was a stranger to heights and tall buildings, it still felt extravagant.

 

“I think my ears popped once we got passed the thirtieth floor,” Daisy mentioned good-naturedly as she dragged her stubborn luggage over the threshold of their shared hotel room. Her suitcase whined against the carpet, wheels worn out completely from the trek between the parking and the hotel, and she threw herself onto their sleek gray settee before scrambling in a hurry to one of the two beds in the room.

 

Jemma wiped her face, disgusted at the veil of sweat that gathered on her skin. It wasn’t even hot out. That sweat had risen just from the sheer frustration of finding the appropriate entrance to the bloody hotel since it was the size of a city block and could only be entered from one door. Apparently. Judging from all the security people who pointed around the corner and then another and then another. “I just want a nice long shower and then a little peek into the conference rooms.” She popped the lock on her suitcase and found a comfortable change of clothing without ado. 

 

“You do that, and I am going to order room service pizza and take a nap.” Daisy had already claimed her bed, abandoning the sitting area, and stretched across the thing with her arms open wide. 

 

Jemma claimed the bathroom, re-organized the supplies, and checked her watch once she was done. “It’s nowhere near time for dinner.”

 

Daisy looked over her pizza, which she had already eaten two slices of. “Speak for yourself.” In front of her, a horror movie was playing on a monstrously-sized television.

 

“I just mean…” what did she mean? “That there’s nothing today planned for the convention attendees until dinner. Isn’t that rather irresponsible?” She complained as she towelled her hair.

 

“Jemma, don’t worry. You are filled with lawful-good energy. You will find something to keep your mind off of it.” 

 

She laughed. “Off of what?”

 

“Seeing Fitz again. You’ll get through it.” She was matter-of-fact and deliberate, and engrossed in the next scene of the movie immediately, mouth half-open. 

 

Jemma watched with repulsion as a particularly angry tree grew through a character’s jaw, snapping their skull in two. She needed a walk. 

* * *

 

Jemma marched through the empty conference hall with her stolen pamphlet in hand. Once she’d been reminded that she was meant to be presenting on her op, she had dove fully into preparing, but when she called for the program, they assured her that it was not printed yet. Luckily, once she arrived, she could see them spread out all over the tables on the bottom floor outside the halls of conference rooms.

 

She had a red folder that was especially packed with information on the city and a green one full of her notes from the op, including her first draft of her article at a wee hundred and forty six pages, and a yellow one that had lots of information on a project Dr. Banner was doing in Russia. That one was just for fun. 

 

The rooms were significant in size, identical as soldiers, and full of comfortable chairs, lined up in front of large projectors that she’d called ahead about (just to make sure she should have no technical difficulties). She skimmed each room, imagining standing on the stages that were set up for the presenters and lecturing again for the first time in ages. Maybe just a year or so it had been, in reality. Time flies. 

 

She scanned the brochure again for the additional activities. There were dine-arounds and networking events in the lounge and bar, and an outing to the aquarium.

 

Oh yes, the red folder was packed with information about that, and she was planning on making the most of it.

 

“There you are!” Bobbi shouted.

 

Jemma jumped. “Were you looking for me? In the whole of this hotel, even? You have such a knack for that, it seems.”

 

“In all of the sixty-five floors. But once we realized that you weren’t on the same one as Daisy, it narrowed the guesses dramatically.” Hunter followed behind her, both of their luggages with him. 

 

“Called her. She said you’d run off.”

 

“Of course I did,” Jemma laughed. “I had to get a good feel for the room I’ll be teaching in.”

 

“Right.” Hunter smirked. “Well, if what I’ve heard is true, you’ll be in 505.” He pointed to the room to their left.

 

It was not surprising. It was the biggest room, and they would need at least two hours to bring the audience up to speed, which meant that they would have a packed house by default, whether or not people decided to come and go. She liked the room. It was lightly decorated inside with red and gold accents like the inside of an antique matchbox. Not conducive to attention, but cozy and warm.  

 

“We’re having a snack. Come with?” Bobbi asked, which her boyfriend peered over her from the back. 

 

“I’ll pass,” she smiled, suspicious all the same. It was that look Hunter had in his eyes. She had seen it a few times before in the most recent past.

 

The first day of the convention was hectic in the way they always are. Someone spelled her name wrong on her badge and she had to wait in line for a lifetime to get it changed. There was a mix-up and Daisy lost her room key, so Jemma missed the first fifteen minutes of the lecture on holography that she had intended on watching, and after, she had been accosted by a very young boy that had apparently read every article that Jemma had ever written, but had no firm grasp of social mores. That being said, he continued to try and talk to her through the panel for that session, as she repeatedly tried to hush him.

 

The lines at every food station in the nearby food court were a mile long, and she ended up eating a package of crisps for lunch while standing outside of the restrooms and watching to see if she saw someone she knew. She practically chugged a bottle of room-temperature water outside of room 504 to ensure that security did not attempt to take it before realizing that the barbarians did not have a rule against taking beverages into the rooms. She may be full of lawful-good energy, but every work-related conference is full of chaotic-neutral.

 

Finally, the last session of the day came to a head at 5:15 and she weasled her way into a bioethics discussion that she knew she needed to attend out of principle, and found the last seat open in the sixth row, where she bulleted as fast as she could to claim the last open chair. Sure, she could stand at the back of the hall, but there it was, occupied only by someone’s old brown satchel. 

 

“May I sit here?” She whispered to the person beside her chair, but she had already made up her mind and was digging through her bag to find her notebook to begin, since the speaker was introducing herself at the front of the room.

 

“Ah-er-yes, sure.”  Leo Fitz answered. He reached a familiar hand over his bag and hesitantly found a place for it on the floor between his feet. She followed that hand without effort and found that it led all the way up to his face, which hung slack-jawed on his flushed red neck. 

 

Jemma coughed to hide her gasp, and turned to go, only to see that she was effectively trapped there, right there, and would be for the next hour.

* * *

  
  


_ Dear god almighty,  _ as Nana Simmons used to say _ , what the ever-loving fuck have I done? _ Jemma whispered to herself in her head. Nana Simmons was not good at cursing so she did it rarely, but when she did, the phrases flew out of her mouth. They did not pass Go. They did not collect $200. 

 

“I’m sorry--” Jemma whispered below the voice of the speaker, whose microphone kept cutting in and out. “I didn’t mean to just pop up out of nowhere.” She flushed the toxic color of a maraschino cherry. 

 

“It’s uh- it’s fine.”  He cleared his throat, and whispered to her, his face a full two feet away so as not to invite familiarity. “The last chair in the hall, so.” He eyed the stage only, held his nervous hands over his laptop keyboard.

 

“Right, okay.” Jemma took out her notebook and her pen and tried desperately to catch something from the speaker that was worth writing down to prove to Fitz that she was just there to learn. Although, ten minutes in and Jemma was thoroughly disappointed. She glanced at Fitz’s computer screen. He also had not made any notes. 

 

That proved it; she was not crazy and distracted. It simply was not that interesting. She looked left and right to see if anyone would see her pull out her yellow folder, and the coast was clear. She opened to the page she had left off on that morning and set to the article again. Successfully, the piece was fascinating enough to engage her senses fully and she made it through a bulk of the lecture without notice of the very handsome man beside her. 

 

“--into the brain stem of another afflicted human being--”

 

There was a typo on the 13th page, Jemma realized. She’d need to write an email to Dr. Banner and inform him. He’d be so embarrassed. She marked it with her red pen for later.

 

“--causing potentially catastrophic damage to the brain--” 

 

The table beneath her work trembled, and she held it still with her knee so she could finish her note.

 

“--irresponsible to the duty of what it means to be human in science because you are all human beings first and biochemists second--”

 

“Jemma,” Fitz said. His voice was not small any longer.

 

“What?” 

 

“She’s talking about us. She’s talking about the Prometheus Operation.” 

 

Jemma snapped to attention. A woman in the row behind her made a disapproving noise. Her head rush drowned out the woman on stage as she continued to speak, aimed at no one in the crowd, but with a furrowed brow and an austere mouth. “What?” Jemma asked, sure that she was hearing incorrectly.

 

“--possibility versus practicality versus ego; money and morality--” 

 

“She’s talking about our project,” Fitz scowled. 

* * *

  
  


Fury and fire, Jemma Simmons stormed the stage. She had sat through the next half-hour of the talk without listening to anything but the angry jackhammer of her pulse. By then, the lecturer had finished her portion and people were leaving the room in exodus except for some of the other scientists who had clustered in groups to gossip and point. 

 

“Excuse me,” she said in a brief moment of composure once she ascended the stage. 

 

“Yes?” 

 

“Dr….was it Michaels?” She asked. It as a calculated mistake. Of course, she knew the lecturer’s name.

 

“McElroy,” the woman flinched, but covered herself with a smile and held a hand out in the beginning of a shake. “And you’re Dr. Simmons. I expected I’d meet you here.”

 

“Such a pleasure to meet you. Tell me, exactly when did you submit your abstract to the conference committee here?” Jemma stood straight. “I must admit, I didn’t see your position on my project written on the program for this lecture.” 

 

“A rather good question, Simmons.” Fitz was beside her, a sure hand grasping the handle of his bag and the other one holding his jacket. Oh, he had flushed a color, his signature, as soon as he realized what implications crossed the threshold of his sanctified scientific ground. “Seeing as the first action of a professional who is questioning the ethics of a project such as ours should be to contact our organizations to discuss.” 

 

Dr. McElroy pursed her lips, a cat waiting for a bird to land on the windowsill. “You didn’t run any of this by your malpractice agents. Either of them. Which is telling to what your position on such an experiment is without need for additional evidence.”

 

Jemma swallowed. It was true. But she’d ran it by Coulson, which at the time seemed to be a bigger issue, and then by transitive property, Director Fury had learned all the same, which was the big gun. No one from Human Resources had come to investigate them. 

 

“It’s an unprofessional way to operate,” Fitz said with a firm chin. “To try, without respect for the purpose of the operation, to discredit it at face value to this entire community. There is no article out yet that explains exactly what it is let alone who it impacts or how it could harm them.”

 

“Dr. Fitz,” the lecturer tried with a hand out, “this is not a question of the virtue of the Prometheus Operation. We know that the experiment was a foolish take on a panacea.” She laughed, just once as if the thought did not even deserve a second breath.

 

“Then what?” Jemma asked. She tried to hide her feeling of exasperation. “You just wanted to try and publicly embarrass a team of scientists who worked diligently and brilliantly to improve the world?” 

 

Dr. McElroy looked over the top of her rimless glasses. “This is about the politics of your company, Dr. Simmons. This went before no board of ethics, got no approval, but raked in the funds of every one of these American taxpayers, and not one of them will be able to afford the product of their tax.”

 

Jemma felt her hands tremble, and balled them into fists are her sides. “You of all people should know that before a tech can be distributed en masse, it must first be created and tested and studied. This--this is just the first step.”

 

A look flickered through the ethicist's eyes, but crumpled weakly before it could ignite. “Don’t you  _ know _ that Shield has already started an accelerated number of trials in their sister companies?” 

 

“No,” Fitz grimaced, stealing a sideways glance at Jemma. “I didn’t.”  

* * *

  
  


Jemma tailed Fitz into the glass elevator, which was surprisingly empty. He’d made for the door at a walk which cascaded into a light jog once he’d made it out of the conference hall, clearly agitated.

 

“I didn’t know, Fitz.” She begged once the doors had shut, and they were rocketed into the sky.

 

He leaned against the wall, but didn’t answer. Instead, he was a grumbly bear trying not to meet her eyes. 

 

“I never would have wanted them to disseminate the raw data without more clinical trials and without the--” she pulled her green folder from her bag, “without the actual written research to explain and study and you haven’t even turned anything in to me to add in here. I never would have dreamed--”

 

“Jemma, I know.” He took a long breath and rubbed the heel of his hand into his eye. “You  _ never _ would have done something so irresponsible. But I might have.”

 

Her ears popped. Her jaw fell to the floor of the rising glass elevator.

 


	19. The Sword or The Pen

As Leo Fitz explained it, the offense happened two nights after he had broken up with Jemma. He had gone down the block and gotten a cup of coffee from the food truck that was religiously in the very same area each day, and when he returned to his office, his manila folder was gone. He thought nothing of it. Rather, he thought Hunter had come through and grabbed it since there was, after all, a light yellow sticky note on it that he had scribbled ‘send to Jemma’ on. The whole of his report was within the folder, just as she had requested.

 

The second clue was that the photograph of her that he had taped to his computer had gone missing as well, which was surely a sign that it was Hunter who’d come through. No one else, he’d thought, would care enough to take it from him. No one else would know what had happened anyway but Hunter, and maybe Bobbi, since Fitz had called him after he left the restaurant and the two had gone out for drinks.

 

“But if it had been Hunter, the research would have gone straight to you.”

 

“Right,” Jemma agreed.  

 

“Well, so it was Will, yeah?” He said, opening his eyes, which had gone all red with his efforts to keep himself focused.

 

She tried to shake the blame from her voice, but it lingered all the same. “Maybe not.”

 

“Who else would find the need to take your photo from my office if it wasn’t you or Hunter?” 

 

Her nervous stomach buzzed. He’d really left it there, eh? She wondered what his intention with it was. “We have to focus on what happens next.” She lied. She was fixed on that thought. She was coddling it. Her plan was to take it home and cook it a nice breakfast, maybe buy it a new sweater or two.

 

Fitz groaned, but he stood straight and balanced his weight equally on his two feet in what must’ve felt like duty. “I have to tell Daisy. And Bobbi.” 

 

Jemma nodded. “Okay, sure. And then what? How are we supposed to address this during the seminar?” She sought an answer, but could only see Fitz floundering before her. 

 

“Right. Okay. Let me think about it. This is on me.” He insisted, already heading off somewhere, leaving Jemma in his dust. “I can fix this,” he called back.

 

After, she walked lazily through the corridor on her floor, dragging her feet. Fitz had kept her picture. Who knows what his intention with it was. Would he have called her back and changed his mind if it hadn’t gone missing? She could feel her skin turn pink from the space between her shoulders to the balls of her feet and warm all the parts in between. Did that mean he missed her?

 

She stopped before she reached the door of her hotel room, and looked across the cavernous building, hollow on the inside, and surrounded by the rooms like the inside of a beehive, buzzing with all sorts of noises. Other convention-goers were all heading down for dine-arounds and loud enough to be heard thirty stories up in a concert of laughs and squeals of old friends meeting up again. How familiar that sound was.

 

Jemma turned the knob and looked back, unsure if her desire to listen was impoliteness or adoration.

* * *

 

Daisy Johnson. Snored. She wasn’t loud, but she was consistent and she snored through the night no matter which side she was lying on. The night previous must have been a miracle hastened with a full stomach and a couple of beers that her roommate had seen crowding the tiny rubbish bin.

 

Three o’clock came rapidly, a change in pace that Jemma was unused to after her slow conversation with her former lover, and on realizing that she was not going to sleep well, she got up for a walk through the hall. 

 

Even in the middle of the night, the beehive of the hotel was not resting. Jemma took a loop of each floor, walking down the stairs to the next one, certain that by the time she reached the bottom floor, where it seemed the ants were resetting the conference floor, she would find enough peace to take the glass elevator back up to where she began and knock off to sleep. 

 

“Hey, I’ve been looking for you. Daisy said you were out.” Fitz said, coming around a corner. He looked a fright, hair all unsettled and his shirt untucked. He carried his cell phone in one hand and a stack of papers.

 

“You scared the hell out of me,” she said, shaking.

 

“Sorry, but look,” he pulled over on the edge of the walkway and flicked through his papers before stacking them on the . “This is, I think, just about everything I had written before.”

 

Jemma flicked through the stack and found herself looking twice. There must have been forty pages just there. “Before they were stolen?” 

 

“I didn’t keep the research on my laptop because I was concerned--”

 

“That someone would access the document due to the internet capabilities.” She finished. “I do the same thing. Keep my papers on a different computer, I mean.”

 

Fitz nodded and leaned against the railing that separated them from the empty expanse of space in the middle of the hotel. “I had to pull in some favors, but I got it here. The only thing next is for you to read it and we try to figure out a way to address what Dr. McElroy said.” 

 

“What do you mean, ‘favors’?” She asked, focused more on what he was evidently trying to skip.

 

“From my landlord, and my office manager, and the lad who owns that food truck on my corner. He opened up late for a coffee.” Fitz glowed. 

 

Jemma’s mouth snapped shut, but she found the will to open it again. “And how did you talk to Daisy? Last I saw her, she was dead to the world.” 

 

“I had to do everything I can to fix this. My poor choices shouldn’t reflect on you. I, uh, I did some loud knocking that I’m afraid she didn’t appreciate.”

 

“You’re as much a victim as I in this whole thing.” 

 

“Right, leaving important secret information out in the open where everyone can access it is a completely innocent place to be.” Fitz hung his head, too heavy on his frame, supported by what looked to be his slumped shoulders exclusively. 

 

The two waited, maybe for the other to speak, all eyes on the cool carpeting. 

 

“Fitz!”

 

“What?” He looked up at her expectantly, bright eyes focused and shame exchanged for the familiar affection that Jemma felt like she had seen a hundred times before.

 

“Have you seriously not been wearing shoes this entire time?” 

 

He wiggled his toes, nestled in his brown stocking feet and shrugged.

* * *

  
  


Bobbi was furious. Not at any of them, and certainly, she claimed, not at Fitz. The day that she was meant to begin the lecture, she was angrily attempting to ring Director Fury with her face scrunched into a scowl behind the white screen where their edited presentation was projected. She promised it was just to talk, but she was all daggers.

 

Daisy shook her head. Scientists of all fields and backgrounds were filing into the conference hall, and the three of them, Fitz, Jemma, and Daisy watched them pack into the room like pickle spears in a jar. In the back, some stood with their tote bags under their arms, and some sat on the floor with their autographed books and free conference pens.

 

“I don’t know what to say to them,” she admitted, squeezing Jemma’s elbow with a grimace on her face. “I didn’t think what we were doing was so bad.”

 

“No, of course not--” Jemma began.

 

“It isn’t!” Fitz finished. “Don’t let them poison you against your own work.” 

 

Daisy took a deep breath. “Maybe I’ll just sit up at the table and let you two do all the talking. If they have coding questions, I’m here, but…” She faced Jemma, fear written all over her expression.

 

Fitz nodded at her. “It’s alright. It’s fine.” He repeated in a mantra. 

 

Jemma shrugged, but the hair on the back of her neck stood up. “Let’s… Let’s begin, I suppose.” She handed Fitz the remote for the projector, and watched as he flicked on the video they had chosen to open. In the audience, people hushed and focused on the piece as it played the footage of their subject from the beginning of the intake to video Bobbi had produced of his progress just the week before. He’d moved onto stairs and balance beams then, already eager to be rid of the wheelchair he was coaxed into for good.

 

Mike Peterson looked a lot better in that moment than he had when Jemma was picking his file out of a database. He stood straight and proud in a manner even he thought was impossible as he turned to Bobbi’s camera. “I feel great,” he admitted with his toothy smile.

 

“This is Mike,” Fitz led, pausing the screen before the room of observers. “There was a time that he never thought he would walk again. I’ve seen his records. It wasn’t too far-fetched to believe that he wouldn’t, and I know for a fact that at least two neurosurgeons told him that he would never stand on his own two feet after the accident he had three years ago.

 

“Now, Mike looks pretty happy here.” Fitz pointed to the screen. “And according to his charts, his last EMG is looking pretty cheerful too. I reckon there are plenty of people here who sat through the same lecture as I did yesterday that accused us of ethical misconduct.” He scanned the room, fidgeted with the remote in his hands. “So I called Mike on the telephone last night, and I asked him if this team had done him a disservice, and he didn’t agree.” 

 

Jemma looked into the crowd. There were no note-takers there. Plenty of tape-recorders, but no one waiting to learn the science of the Prometheus Operation. Some of the onlookers had leaned over their cups of steaming coffees, but the same amount leaned back into their generic chairs with explicit indignance scrawled all through their bodies. Under their eyes, she wanted to come off as sure of herself and of the team, but instead she felt uncomfortable under their scrutiny and she crossed her arms. 

 

“I’m not sure he knew too much about who I am, but he told me all about himself and about his son here.” Fitz clicked to the next slide, this time a picture of Mike and Ace, who were playing the softest game of football either of them ever had before. “And there is not a doubt in my mind that no one in this world is as thankful for Dr. Jemma Simmons as is Ace Peterson.” 

 

Surprisingly, There was applause.

 

“I’d like to present the person who made Ace the happiest little boy on this side of the galaxy.” And Fitz turned to her with fondness that touched the corners of his eyes.

 

And Jemma had to try not to burst out in tears in front of the 500 people who had come to see her speak.

 

“It’s a pleasure for all of us to be here,” she began with her wavering voice. “To explain to you precisely what the Prometheus Operation is and how it works. To replace whatever prejudices that have been presented to you as oversight,” she eyed the audience and hoped to find Dr. McElroy considering. “With educated and accurate information.” 

 

There were whispers, she knew, but she ignored them and continued on. “It would be a misrepresentation of this work to omit the plagiarism that another research company has committed of this research, however, and this is what I feel the need to address next.” She cleared her throat, careful not to echo into the microphone pinned on her shirt, and told the story of how colleagues had the potential of becoming close friends or formidable foes.

* * *

  
  


Jemma dreamed that she was dancing ballet in a red theater, empty save for two black silhouettes in the audience. She gracefully turned on the tips of her toes in tight circles, holding in her hands test tubes filled with different chemicals in earthy colors. For the beginning of the performance, she was an ibis. Then, with a thimbly tinkle, the tube in her right hand flew to the ground, shattering at her feet.

 

Someone in the seats clapped loudly, rhythmically, and with abandon.

 

Jemma scrambled for words. “Sorry! Sorry, that was not supposed to happen.”

 

“I can fix it,” the nameless man spoke. He approached the stage at a jog, his coat fluttering behind him. When he got to the stage, Jemma could see that he had no face. “I’m an engineer.” He said.

* * *

 

 

She did not wake with a start. Her eyes fluttered open in the dark of the room she was meant to leave once the sun rose. Her phone, which she had turned to silent long ago, lit up the night. Against her better judgement, she reached for it, only to see that it was just after midnight.

 

_ Your presentation went over very well! _ Leo Fitz texted her. What a coincidence that he even knew she had woken a minute before.

 

She fumbled with the phone any typed back,  _ You’re still up?  _ She wondered for a second before realizing that if Fitz were awake and at a party, the only reason was that he’d found something to hold his attention and since Hunter was there in Atlanta with them, it was probably something that could normally be found in a bottle.

 

Instantly, the phone lit again.  _ Everyone is at the lounge party downstairs. I cannot tell you how proud Vaughn is of you. _

 

Jemma sighed, and turned to where Daisy was obviously lying in bed awake since there was no snoring. She had gone off somewhere as well.

 

_ You could join us if you wanted. Not really a party withouty you. _

 

She put the mobile back down on her nightstand, and squeezed her eyes shut. So that confirmed it; he was obviously drunk.

  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For real, though, are you guys catching the Arctic Monkeys references? Just curious. Call it market research.


	20. Paprika

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, everyone! Happy NaNoWriMo!

_ Aren’t you coming?  _ The phone lit again, followed once more by a dangerous triple text that read:  _ You must havve fallen asleep. _

 

She rolled onto her back and considered. It was the last night there, and she really hadn’t spoken to anyone the whole time other than the team. The very first day, that emergency had unearthed itself. She could put on some clothes and go down, just sit at the table and have a snack while Fitz and Hunter sang drunken karaoke and Daisy and Bobbi laughed at her side. It was a particularly kind sort of vision. There was also the option to just turn back over in bed and get the last of her eight hours. She did have big plans for the next day. Things were packed up and ready to go and she would stow her things away by the door, being sure to get a few hours in at the aquarium before taking off back to New York. She would use all of her attention on that task, so of course she needed a good night’s rest. 

 

On the other hand, Fitz looked particularly charming in the burnt orange jumper he’d chosen to wear earlier that day. A fascinating compliment to the color of his eyes…

 

“Simmons?” A faint knocking could be heard at the door, and surely (speak of the devil) that was him.

 

She bit her lip, unsure if she should answer.

 

“Are you sleeping?” He whispered, with a chuckle. “Jemma Simmons?”

 

“That might not even be her room, mate.” Hunter was heard, likely standing outside in the corridor watching his best friend act like a buffoon just for the fun of it.

 

Well, Jemma could only say so much about that. Had it been Bobbi Morse, she would have done the very same. She might even have her camera out to photograph the hilarious and unlikely evidence, since Bobbi was the picture of poise.

 

Jemma stood and walked on mouse feet to the door, still debating whether or not to open it and follow them down to the party in her pyjamas. 

 

“It’s her room; Daisy told me so.” 

 

“You could have the number wrong or she could be off somewhere else--maybe out at dinner or-” He was cut off short.

 

“Or what?”

 

There was a thick pause before Hunter finished his thought. “Or she could be off in someone else’s room.”

 

Fitz made a noise. “Would she?” 

 

“Just--y-you know--good luck. I’m going back downstairs. Ring if you need me.” The sound of a pat on the back could be heard, and there was silence for long enough that Jemma assumed that Fitz had decided to head off. 

 

She was just making her way back to her bed when he knocked again. “Simmons?” He asked, this time much gentler.

 

Her feet made scuffing noises as she approached the door again. “It’s rather late, don’t you think?” She opened the barrier that kept them apart.

 

His eyes flew to his watch. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize it was that late.” his Ss slurred, and his eyes burned red in the low light of the corridor. “ _ Much _ too late now, huh?”

 

Jemma cleared her throat. “Do you need something?” She was uncomfortably aware of her legs, stretching out beneath the hem of her shorts, aware of her naked feet on the carpet and the foot between his feet and hers.

 

He laughed. He opened his mouth once, twice, and snapped it shut again before looking not into the floor this time, but into the ceiling. “Want to come up and see the view from my room? I mean it not as a… line. It’s very beautiful at night. All the lights and things.”

 

“You’re pissed.” She accused, but the offer was delightful. To think of the two of them sitting on a chair side by side in the middle of the night on one of of the most anticipated science conventions of the year, maybe the thought of his hand reaching out to hold hers… 

 

He nodded. “Eh, but who’s to say I’m wrong about that skyline?” 

 

She considered briefly before packing her room key into the pocket of her jersey robe and tying it tightly around her waist. 

 

There were different elevators that went up to the fortieth floors, sectioned off from the rest of them to avoid overcrowding. In a building that consisted of fifty levels, it was a miracle that the wait time was only minutes before the elevator reached any particular floors. They rode up as they leaned against the walls without speaking, and once they arrived at the 48th floor, where Fitz had been assigned, Jemma followed him to the landing. 

 

“I didn’t lie, did I?” He smirked, looking over the whole of the city. It didn’t look like New York City at all. There were several other skyscrapers around them, but the scene stretched on, unbothered by too many buildings blocking their view. On the far edge of the horizon, there were plenty of dim lights to show them exactly how much was laid out before the. 

 

“Not at all,” she confirmed, but while the lights were enchanting, they had nothing on the edges of his ivory teeth or the line of his jaw, which had become peppered in the last couple of days with a blend of paprika and curry-colored hair. 

 

Fitz cleared his throat, but his words sounded no better from the effort. “I’m sorry,” he said, “to wake you and also for the research getting stolen.”

 

“I’m sorry about the stuff with my work. I-I really didn’t know that they were dispersing my information from the office. Honestly, it wasn’t even a complete thought to me yet. Too many more trials to be run.” She turned her eyes back to the scene before them.

 

“Psh. That’s a cat out of the bag now. Not your fault. There is certainly some less than desirable language in your contract, yeah? Probably something about sharing technology?”

 

Was it a joke? She wondered. He was certainly in a good mood, ready for a laugh. He looked so much happier than she was sure she had ever seen him before. “Yeah,” she said, trying to hide her curiosity.

 

“And I’m sorry too for dragging you up here when I’m sure you had just planned on having a nice, quiet rest tonight.” He gestured to her garments, hidden behind the robe. 

 

She smiled, but didn’t have the heart to look his way even if he  _ had _ turned to her first. God, that would rip her in two.

 

“I suppose I just miss you.” He admitted. 

 

In her peripherals, she watched as he checked the time on his watch again. Her heart was beating fast enough that her head had gone all dizzy to compensate for the flow of blood. “I--” she began, but he had already begun.

 

“Should I walk you back down?” He asked. “Don’t want any creepos, I mean, creepy people following you around while you walk down in your unmentionables.” 

 

Even she had to laugh at that. Since when had a set of bed clothes and a long ugly robe become something “unmentionable”? 

 

He rubbed his eye with his own smirk still bold and resilient. For a moment, she was sure he was going to reach for her hand, but he hesitated and shoved his fists into his pockets. Once they were back in the elevator, he began again. “It’s funny how this has switched around. I’m standing here off my face and you’re right there completely sober.” 

 

Jemma watched as the pinpricks of partiers on the ground floor grew closer. She couldn’t look at that face. If she did, she would lose all of her nerve. “Some things don’t change, though.” She gulped. “After all, you’re still standing there trying to figure out if I could love you or not.”  

 

His face fell. Almost audibly. And he began to cough. 

 

The doors of the glass elevator opened on her floor and she stepped out onto the corridor, but he didn’t follow her. Perhaps he knew better or perhaps Jemma was a bloody fool. It wouldn’t be the first time she read the wrong thing into a situation.

 

“Goodnight, Jemma,” he said with the tinge of a stutter and part of a slur trying to grab hold of him. His words came out, though, and neither of those things had won.

 

She nodded, but didn’t say goodnight back. She didn’t think she would be sleeping too well despite his wishes for her.

* * *

 

 

The sun rose eventually, as it always does, but Jemma had been awake for hours fluctuating between terrified and fortified after what she’d said to Fitz. There would probably be more conferences and more awards ceremonies. There would be science retreats to beautiful European cities with names you had to read first in order to learn how to pronounce. 

 

In her bed beside Jemma’s, Daisy groaned. She had come back to the room just a couple of hours before, obviously on a walk of shame. People fucked at these conventions like rabbits and apparently Ms. Johnson was no different than the others.

 

Jemma stood and crossed to the window to close the shade. In the night, the lights were dimmer and more comforting, but there were a couple of hours before either of them had to check out. She looked at her friend who had fallen asleep already as she swaddled herself in her underwear in the light beige of the plush hotel comforter. She obviously couldn’t wake her. 

 

Instead, in the dim room, Jemma packed up the rest of her things as silently as she could manage, showered, and dressed, being sure to write clear instructions to her roommate about what she would need to do after her wake-up call came through. She packed her handbag with a nice snack and a small bag for souvenirs she may want from the aquarium gift shop, and she walked to the bottom floor of the hotel for a cup of coffee.

 

The teenage barista had just taken her order when Hunter peered over her shoulder to give his own before paying for both of their breakfasts without being asked.

 

She smirked at him. “Thank you. You must feel that you’re in some kind of trouble to owe me anything.” 

 

He shrugged. “Doubt it. Other than harking your best friend for the past few months, I am innocent as a morning dove.”  

 

“Hmm.” 

 

Jemma took her coffee and thanked Hunter again before sharing her plans with him and taking off on the short walk it was to her prized destination.

 

“I’ll, uh, I’ll walk you down, if that’s alright.”

 

She nodded, still surprised as he followed her out onto the street with his coffee in one hand and his pastry in the other, clearly unprepared for the venture. 

 

“I know this seems like it’s coming out of nowhere, but I just was wondering how things were going lately. Seems like it’s been a while since you visited the flat and after the whole break-up and all that jazz… ”

 

“Oh, Hunter, I’m alright.” She answered, turning a corner, and being sure to pull him along by the elbow since he was watching only the direction he was going and not the one they needed to follow. 

 

He took a deep swig of his coffee. “Brill.”

 

A ferris wheel grew bigger in the distance, meaning their destination was not far. 

 

“So speaking of, wanted to know if you’ve been seeing anyone?” He said with a noncommittal shrug, “and if you are, if it’s very serious.” 

 

Ah. Okay. 

 

“Because if not, either way around, I’ve got this mate at the office I think you’d like.”

 

“Let me guess. You’re referring to Fitz.” 

 

Hunter choked on the next sip of his drink. “No-no. I don’t mean Fitz. I mean someone else. Entirely.” 

 

Jemma stopped in her tracks and turned to him. Was he having a laugh? She could have sworn there was a time when she could pick out the differences between sarcasm and literality. “So what’s his name, then?” 

 

“T-triplett.” He answered dryly. 

 

“Hm,” she said again and started back up, wishing that she had just left him at the shop in their hotel. She smoothed the wrinkles in her top and focused on the bitter taste of her morning beverage. Were her hopes up and meant to be dashed? Or was Hunter scheming and pretending not to be? Jemma wished Bobbi was there because she was excellent at calling out his plans. “Tell me about him.” She urged.

 

“Well, he’s funny. Likes a good joke and all that. Drinks the same kind of coffee you like, and apparently he has very smelly feet, which I didn’t think would bother you too much.” Hunter rambled on a bit more.

 

Jemma wrinkled her nose. “That’s the type of man you think I’d like? Someone with smelly feet who likes going to baseball games?”

 

His shoulders slumped. “Now, Simmons, you know that I can be an excellent liar. And I would be, if I wanted to. But I promised not to tell you.”

 

She felt her forehead turn strawberry red, the same colors that she painted her toenails each weekend just to have something to do.  _ “This is self care,” Daisy lectured, “and you need to do it sometimes. It’s what weekends are for.” _

 

The red twinge faded when she thought about the stabbing comment she’d made to Fitz the night before. The two of them, Hunter and she, stood outside the gigantic warehouse of a building that she’d looked forward to visiting all month.

 

“D’you know that whale sharks are neither whales nor sharks?” Hunter asked as he flicked his sunglasses on to hide the brightening light as it became full around them.

 

She nodded. “Yes.” 

 

“I’m heading back to the hotel. I forgot to pick up the slice of coffee cake that Bob wanted for breakfast. Just enjoy your visit for me, would you?” 

* * *

  
  


In the aquarium, there was a tunnel with a moving sidewalk where Jemma could stand and watch overhead while manta rays turned somersaults above her without anyone to tell her to stop idling in the way of everyone else. She stood there with her cup of water in hand and studied the schools of fish that passed by the museum’s patrons in all of their tropical colors like clouds passing between society and the sun. After a while, she moved from that tunnel and found the next room. It was dark in there, lit from the tank where the schools still swam in concert and the rays practiced clumsy dances. 

 

It was far better than television and it had a much bigger screen. The large window must have been two stories high, which was undoubtedly wonderful for the three whale sharks that turned around their tank in circles, none of them too close to the others. Were they avoiding each other? Or were they following each other?   
  
  
  



	21. Every Inch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I've been using the beginning of NaNoWriMo to pump out the last little bit of this work. Things will probably get published rather fast at this point. (I've finished the fic, but am now very lazily editing. Due to the need to focus on something new, there will probably be lots of typos. My intention is to get the content out now and come back with the tweaking later.)

She guessed that people had knack for finding her. It seemed as though no matter where she went, someone she knew was popping around a corner. This time, she had been so focused on the fishes she had been so excited to see that she almost didn’t notice that Fitz had taken a spot beside her on the raked seats in the natural theater.

 

“Good morning,” he said quietly. He was almost unheard over the sounds of amazed children all around them gasping and stomping around the audience.

 

She smiled, conscious to keep the expression small. “Surprised you’re not begging for something over-the-counter this morning.”

 

He smiled back and took a deep pull of his drink, probably something strong enough to stave the hangover away. “I didn’t know you were coming here today, I promise. Not following you around.”

 

She watched as another giant fish crossed the screen with a family of yellow fish following along under its fins. “Are you sure? I think I told about everyone, even the woman who poured my coffee this morning.”

 

“I just wanted to watch them for a bit,” he pointed. “I’ve never been here before.”

 

A large sea turtle flapped lazily across the window.

 

Jemma sighed. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt so relaxed.” Maybe the two of them were similar in that way, wanting to find themselves in that one spot for so long. There had been a time a millennium ago that she was terrified of the water. Sure, she was good at it now, but she didn’t even learn to swim until she started at university.

 

“I’m sure. You’re probably also exhausted from the whole event, though, too. And maybe me waking you up in the middle of the night.” In the dim light of that theatre, Fitz’s face glowed the same color of pale blue that could be seen in the Northern Lights. The same color of a blue jay's back.

 

Jemma’s heart felt like it would burst. Was that what it felt like to drown?

 

“I’m sorry.” He said.

 

“What?”

 

“I’m sorry about what I did. In February, I mean. I don’t know how it came to that. Maybe I was afraid… or something.”

 

Jemma thought about scoffing. The incident in February instead of the incident in Sheffield, right? “What on Earth could you have been afraid of?” The tips of her ears felt hot and whatever feeling of relaxation that had cradled her before seemed to rip out a rug from beneath her in a cruel exchange. She scrambled for words before adding, “Now? You want to talk about this now?” It wasn’t fury yet, but a small flame burned in her stomach.

 

“I owe it to you to tell you that I was wrong,” he parsed.

 

She kept her eyes on the tank before them, children’s grubby handprints on the glass and all. They pointed and oohed and seemed to act as a divine chorus. “I’m sorry that I…” What was there to be sorry for? After all, _he_ had left her. And she hadn’t done anything wrong with Will.

 

“I think you were right about what you said, that I’m waiting to see if you’ll ever,” he grimaced. “To see if you’ll ever love me. And you never promised me that. I know. You even said I’d be mad to think about it when we first started seeing each other.”

 

She could have laughed at that phrase. It wasn’t really ‘seeing each other’ when she was calling him drunk off her arse to come over and shag her.

 

Fitz turned her direction, but she was still looking ahead. “I’d hoped you might change your mind, and I think I was disappointed that you didn’t. And Will might not be as smart as me, but he’s got his own set of great qualities and just that he--” he stuttered, faltering under the pressure for a little while. “He got the chance to be in love with you, Jemma.”

 

Her breath was lost.

 

“And I’m jealous of that more than anything else.”

 

“He didn’t love me,” she replied, shaking her head. “That’s not love, Fitz. He, um, he was in love with something else, and I’m still not sure what that is, but it wasn’t me.”

 

He hung his head, but she couldn’t place why. It wasn’t an admission of guilt; he couldn’t feel bad for her.

 

“You have been light years ahead of him since the day I met you.” She admitted. There were tears in her eyes. So maybe he loved her, but it was still him who decided to cut and run.

 

He fidgeted and took another long sip of his drink. “I’m sorry.”

 

Jemma groaned and was immediately embarrassed at how desperate the noise sounded. “Stop saying that.” She wiped her eye on the sleeve of her shirt.

 

“I can’t. With good reason because I shouldn’t. I fucked all of this up, and without good reason apparently.” He got louder, almost angry.

 

“Okay, well, we start over then. My name is Jemma Simmons.” She held out her hand, which shaked this time for completely different reasons. This time it wasn’t tremor from drink and it wasn’t nervousness. She was used to this feeling. It rang in concordance with Phil Coulson’s words during her job interview: potential.

* * *

 

 

On her way into Fitz’s room, she tripped over one of his loose shoes and tumbled onto the ground arse over tit. With a laugh, and despite the throbbing bump on her knee, she rolled onto the deep brown carpet and came to a stop at the foot of his bed.

 

“Alright?” He asked, only to follow her onto the floor and sit cross legged beside her.

 

“Yeah,” She answered. They’d spent the better part of the day at the aquarium, having moved on from the whale sharks to the belugas and then onto the penguins, only to circle back once more to the theatre for the end of the trip after they’d had awful and unhealthy lunches in the cafeteria.

 

“You’d think you were the one that had two beers at the spinning bar on top of a tall building.”

 

“Is that what you did last night? Where the party was?”

 

He shook his head too quickly. “Oh, no. It was downstairs in this crummy little lounge that made my office look like the louvre.” He leaned on his side, clearly uninterested in getting up for any cause.

 

“So then who?”

 

“Hunter took Bobbi up there on some sort of a fancy date--counterintuitive, I know-- and he came back on probably three or four glasses of fancier wine, and poor Bobbi, she tripped over him when he fell in the door himself.”

 

Jemma laughed.

 

“You’d never know it, but he’s a lightweight.”

 

In turn, the two of them rested against the floor and it was sudden, the feeling that she might not ever choose to stand up, but lie there in the relative comfort of the concrete floor instead.

 

“Do you think you’ll ever… you know, get to the same place that he’s at?” Fitz asked.

 

She took a deep breath. “Some people don’t.” It was true. There were people who could handle themselves and people who could not ever have a pint again. She knew this not because she had researched going back to drinking, doing the “normal” things people did, but because she knew well enough how the brain worked. If she hadn’t known enough before the Prometheus Op, she certainly did then.

 

“And you?” He hesitated, seemed to try the taste of the words on the back of his tongue before letting them out.

 

It was a question she tried desperately not to think of. How the night that her mother visited had turned into a binge was uncertain. Was it her brain chemistry or was it the catalyst? What a stupid question. They were not independent of the other. “Why do you ask?”

 

“What if the moment ever came again? A toast at a fancy gala or a friend’s wedding?”

 

“I don’t have to think about that any time soon,” Jemma laughed mischievously. Bobbi was not marrying Hunter in the near future, she was certain. Well, actually, it had been a while since they really spoke about it. “You don’t know something that I don’t do you?”

 

“Ah, um, no. Of course not. Don’t you have a plane to catch or something?”

 

Jemma grimaced. She had missed that flight hours ago. “I didn’t catch it.”

 

“What?!” Fitz sat straight up from his seat on the floor with a look of mild horror plastered over his face.

 

“We were looking at the sea lions--I got preoccupied.” She tried her best to adopt an innocent expression. At her heart, she was a good girl, but it was just one flight and she could probably get another one later. Atlanta was busy, surely there was something else heading north. She rarely ever took personal time off of work, so if she chose to take one day, just to take it, Coulson couldn’t be angry.

 

It wasn’t strange for Fitz to show that concern for her having missed her aero. He showed it on the night he snuck into her lab. She’d seen him show it to Elena on the night she timidly knocked on his bedroom door because she wanted to know if she should see a doctor for some swelling in her wrist after a kickboxing class and Jemma had been over.

 

“Everything is fine, Fitz.” She reassured, hoping he would settle down into the plush hotel carpet beside her. She missed the familiar thump of his heart against her jaw. Every inch counted, every millimeter that he edged closer to her on the floor.

 

He found his way back, closer by at least a centimeter than where he had been before. “Jemma, I have to tell you. This floor is filthy. I cannot believe I ended up down here.”

 

“I’m sure you’ll make it.” She found herself laughing again.

 

They relaxed, and joked, and then grew silent, and Jemma hadn’t even realized she’d fallen asleep there until she jerked right back awake, her hand having fallen from her stomach and landing on the floor. She rushed to her senses and sat up to lean against the mattress just behind her.

 

Fitz sat up and leaned beside her, oblivious to the minor tragedy she’d just had. “I know this is going to sound like it’s coming from nowhere, but it’s not.”

 

“What? What is?” She blinked.

 

“Do you have any plans tonight?”

* * *

 

 

The chill was uncertain if it were late winter or early spring. Either way, as the two of them walked through the wind-tunnel roads outside of their hotel, they chilled. It took them fifteen minutes just to get out of the hotel and even with Fitz clutching his gps like a bible, they had been searching for one single road for almost half an hour.

 

“This way, I’m sure this time.” He pointed, head down to study the device in his hand.

 

“You were sure last time.” Jemma complained, but she was excited to see the giant ferris wheel that he’d suggested as a trip. It had already grown dark and there were all sorts of folks out. The only reason she’d agreed to follow him around was because this was most certainly a date and she couldn’t say no to him.

 

“There! Right there!” Fitz pointed suddenly. Just past the aquarium where they had been that morning, the giant thing stood beside a building just as tall. He reached for her hand, and pulled her towards the line of teenagers that had accumulated there. They giggled and pushed each other, danced in the long meandering line.

 

It was different than she was used to. Even when things had been more serious, this was not something they did. They read scientific journals to each other, had sex in the dark, and ate takeaway in his bedroom. Those parties with friends were another animal entirely. They were rooms full of loud people with big personalities that dwarfed theirs so easily. Lovely, they were, but those personalities are demanding.

 

“Can we wait?” He asked. His squinting eyes twinkled in the light of the lamps on the street.

 

Her chest caved in on itself. “Of course.”

 

“I want you to see it.” He said, putting the gps away in his pockets and shoving his hands in his coat.

 

“Fitz, is this a date?” Jemma asked, quickly, so she did not fold under the pressure of asking.

 

“Of course,” he answered. “The proper kind, not a romp in a bar.”

 

They waited in line for long enough that around them, businesses closed. People were taking their dogs out for their nighttime walks before heading back to their pricey condos. The temperature dropped only lower. By the time they reached the front of the line, the sky had turned the color of treacle. The attendant let them into a pod and shut the flimsy metal door.

 

“This is proper terrifying,” Fitz mumbled once the wheel began it’s spin.

 

A smirk crossed Jemma’s face. “Don’t be silly.”

 

“You forget between the two of us who is the engineer,” he said, trying to smile at her jesting despite his eyes being locked on the rubberband that someone had used to repair a cracking o-ring on the arm that held their pod.

 

Jemma reached for his hand, and he pulled her against him without shyness. Without reserve. How could he come back so quickly. It had only been a couple of days since they met again. She thought to argue with him about how cavalier it could be that all of a sudden he was holding her when he’d also just cut off all ties without struggle.  

 

He looked down at her, smile wide.

 

Okay, nevermind.

 

“As poorly constructed as it is, the view is beautiful, yeah?”

 

“I think everything I’ve seen here is beautiful, really.” She gulped. The view of Fitz taking in the fish. The view of Fitz taking in the city. How could she have gotten here? After all, he’d just been a cranky man in a bar arguing with a bartender over a glass just months ago. Thoughts had compacted themselves into her brain space to the extent that even she knew that it was a miracle she had enough left to remember how to breathe. The carriage they were in grew hot all at once.

 

She wasn’t even sure if she had made the decision to kiss Fitz, or if the decision had made her.  

  
  
  



	22. Alone Together

Jemma’s belongings were still down with the attendants at the check-in area of the hotel. They had been instructed to leave them there until she returned, and she did promise to return once she got back from sightseeing, but when she and Fitz came back to the hotel after their night of galavanting, picking up her suitcase was the last thing on her mind.

 

The night had ended in a rooftop bar with some pretentious name, virgin drinks in hand. There was only so much that could be done with a virgin gin and tonic or an alternative applejack, so the two of them sat, watching the lights evermore, at a table by the window where Fitz nursed a bright pink daiquiri. 

 

“Do you think they can see me? 60 levels down, in the street, I mean?” He joked, almost tossing the flamingo drink out after the first sip of syrupy sweetness.

 

Jemma stirred her matching pina colada, which she was sure was comprised of only pineapple juice and an absurd amount of whipped cream. Was there even ice in it at all? “Undoubtedly. Even in the dark.”

 

It had been a long time since Jemma laughed like that with anyone save for Daisy, and when she thought of that, even she could see her elbows move inward in defense. 

 

“What’s the matter?” Fitz asked.  He pushed his drink to the end of the table. 

 

“I’ve just realized that I haven’t seen Bobbi in ages.”

 

“She’s been busy.” 

 

She scoffed. “See, but that’s just it. How should you know that when I don’t?”

 

She wondered if Bobbi’s intention was fling her out of the nest like a mama bird after the end of the cruddy rehab. Since the relapse, she had only seen her a couple of times, just long enough for a single cup of tea or for long enough to trade notes on the project at work. Thinking about the time before, about going to the theatre together and road trips out to Canada just a year before, made her eyes burn.

 

Head hanging down again, Fitz looked at her over his eyelashes. “She’ll come around, Jem.”

 

Jemma sniffed. Maybe it would be better to pack all of her things and move back to England. Sure, her mother would be there, but Will wouldn’t. She wouldn’t have to worry about the loneliness that washed over her when she failed at something. It seemed that there was never anything to cut that pain. She was always trying to quiet those voices. 

 

“I feel like I know what you’re thinking.”

 

“I doubt it,” Jemma laughed. He was acting in good nature, but it had been a long time, too that he was sectioned off from her. Another failure. 

 

“You remember what I told you before New Years?”

 

She nodded. Something about the first foot, something about people never really making each other happy, something about how she would love his mother. Okay, he had been right about a few of those things, at least for a little while. She did love his mother until she had slandered her over her own breakfast bar. She did need all the luck she could get considering that the year had started dreadfully. 

 

“People can’t make each other happy, not really.” She replied, trying to tease him with an autocratic tone that still managed to make him smile.

 

“Still true. People can only make themselves happy, but sometimes it’s nice to have someone beside you while you’re figuring out how to get there. I think that’s what Mike Peterson needs right now. Someone to stand beside him while he gets there, too.” 

 

“Bobbi is a giver. You’re right about that.” Jemma conceded. “She gave to me for a long time.” 

 

Fitz leaned back in his chair, obviously done with these types of lights and the disgusting drink he regretted ordering. “Yeah, I think so.” 

 

Jemma stood and swung her bag over her shoulder. She was fine with leaving then. It was a sensible hypothesis. Though it couldn’t be tested thoughtfully, the answer would likely show itself as the project came to a close.

* * *

 

  
  


They explored everything within a couple blocks of the hotel. There were glass tunnels that weren’t meant to match the elevators, but they connected their hotel with other hotels and food courts, like the one Jemma had foolishly walked to on the street during her first day at the convention. One tunnel led to a building into another tunnel, through to the metro station, and popped out to a shopping mall. Fitz pulled Jemma along by the hand as though he were already comfortable with her again, two lovers off on a vacation together.

 

“Do you reckon we’re anywhere close to heading back?” Fitz asked after a while, once Jemma had started yawning. The doors between the buildings didn’t close or lock. There was no curfew out there.

 

Jemma laughed. No, she didn’t think so. And even if she did, there wasn’t a room waiting on her. And that brought the next bit of conversation.

 

They decided that she would stay with Fitz in his room, because the two of them sleeping so near to each other wasn’t new to them. And sure, he might sleep on the pull-out couch like a good clever gentleman, but Jemma was still musing something different. As tired as she was, her body was still awake. 

 

She gathered her things from the lobby attendant while he waited patiently in a chair near the elevators, watching the water feature trickle thickly against itself. He laid his head into his palm, his focus distant or internal, but otherwise not on the feature itself. On something more serious.

 

“Are--” Jemma began, set on asking him if he was alright.

 

“Is this a mistake?” He asked. “Thinking that I can just come back into your life?”

 

“Well--” Jemma began again. She wanted to tell him that it that an idea like that was ludicrous. 

 

“I’ve made some pretty shitty mistakes in the past. I have to atone for that, don’t I?” He stood up hurriedly. “That’s the right thing to do--I mean, what you’re supposed to do after something like that.”

 

“I--”

 

“I shouldn’t have broken things off with you. I want you to know,” he grew infinitely more serious, “that you didn’t do anything wrong. I let my insecurities get in the the way, Jemma.”

 

She looked around the hotel lobby. “Can we do this somewhere else? Somewhere where there aren’t strangers standing all around?” No one was looking at them, and she was glad because she would have melted under anyone else’s stares. She was already smouldering under his.

 

He conceded and the pair went up to the 48th floor again, making light chatter in the elevator they shared with a group of flight attendants in matching scarlet red suits. Once they arrived and shut the door behind him, he started again.

 

“Shouldn’t I have to fight more to make you even tolerate me at this point?”

 

“You’ve thought a lot about this, haven’t you?” 

 

“No, I didn’t. That’s the problem,” he said. He looked too upset about it.

 

Jemma dropped her things by the door and tossed her bag on the bed. Room service had come in while they were gone and everything looked like it had been reset. It would have been a fitting setting if this were a film. “I’m not in the business of trying to make you feel bad about yourself, Fitz. I’m just… I’m happy to see you.” She crossed over to him, where he was standing dumbly in the middle of the room. 

 

He smiled.

 

“Take it as it is,” Jemma urged. She pulled him into a hug, glad again to know how it felt to hold him.

* * *

 

 

The two of them had lain in their respective beds at Fitz’s behest for maybe an hour or so when Jemma realized that she wasn’t going to fall asleep. She was exhausted, and could barely hold her eyes open, but she knew that he was over there, just a microsecond away. It was futile. Despite trying to focus on the weight of the warm down comforter or the humming sound of the heating unit by the bathroom, she was thinking of how warm it must be there. How the sound of his breathing must crash like waves on a shore.

 

“Are you awake?” She moused.

 

“Yeah, I can’t sleep.” He answered. He did not budge, just stayed there flat on his back.

 

At least she wasn’t alone. “What was your favorite animal in the aquarium?” The intent was to think of them, floating around. Studies showed that watching a fish for even just a few minutes induced significant relaxation. 

 

“I liked the rays, but probably only because they were showing off. There was a pretty girl in the audience. I’m sure they were pining after her.” His voice was slow and slurred, though this time he had not had a sip to drink. Unless that daiquiri counted. “Too bad she was with that man, though. He looked like a Hellenistic statue, and the humble ray just cannot compete.”

 

Jemma giggled, surprising herself. She couldn’t remember the last time she had ever made that noise. 

 

She heard him smile as well. His laughs were silent most of the time. A thought came to mind: Imogene telling Jemma over lunch when Fitz was in the loo, that as a child, he had been much different, but always a serious sort of boy. She’d recalled an old joke book of his that he kept on his nightstand and flipped through without laughing each night for at least a year. It was a punch in the gut when she remembered how Imogene had finished the story: that he was using the book as a reference on how to be funny to try and make friends.

 

Quietly, so that the chance that he might not hear her, she asked, “Could you come over?” 

 

He didn’t ask for clarification. Instead, in seconds and a rustle of the pale gray sheets that he had borrowed from the hotel commissary, he had climbed into the proper bed. 

 

He smelled just the way she remembered, from long ago. He’d lost his shirt at some point, probably after the light had turned out. He was always more comfortable that way. That feeling was the best thing she had experienced all day, the feeling of his chest pressing close to hers like a bandaid covering a sensitive wound. That was the smell of hops and cream again, this time without anything hidden to bite at her. 

 

It began with a kiss, the way things tend to begin, which became a nibble when Jemma took his bottom lip, and Fitz’s breath hitched with a sound like rolling thunder. She grasped his cheek, relishing the soft-sandpaper feeling of him in her hands, and all at once, he seemed to hesitate. 

 

“I’m not sure,” he started. His hands were still stroking the small of her back.

 

“Okay,” Jemma stopped at once, but her stomach fell. She withdrew her hands from his body as well as the thigh that had hooked around him at some point and turned around to feel his skin against her back instead. A poor consolation prize, but not one that she would admit. 

 

He tensed behind her, stiff as a board. “You’re disappointed.” It was not a question. 

 

“It’s not that,” she lied. She couldn’t tell him otherwise. That would be coercion, and Jemma Simmons was not that kind of girl. 

 

He rested his hand on her hip and moved the other under her head as a pillow. “It’s not that I don’t want to.”

 

“It’s fine, really.”

 

“Do you remember when we slept together at our friends’ flat? I think it was the first time that I felt you when you had your wits about you. Was it Christmas?” He squeezed that hip.

 

Jemma felt that she had been shocked by lightning. She remembered that night perfectly and the sound of his breathing in her ear. She remembered how he leaned over in the dark making jokes about how he could hear reindeer landing on the roof, and even then, with all those months between then and where she was, she couldn’t hold in her laugh. Instead, the fiddled with the pillow under her head, accommodating the stretch of his arm so that he didn’t lose circulation. 

 

“Was it?” He asked again.

 

Jemma nodded and trusted that he could hear the wrinkle of fabric as a clue. She wouldn’t successfully keep her animal noises restrained if she opened her mouth to answer. 

 

He slipped his hand over her stomach, touching softly the skin that had struggled to unsheath itself, her navel and that freckle just to the left of it that he used to kiss when he could get her bare, out in the open. “I can’t think of a way to explain how exceptional it was to know that I was making love to you instead of being used.”

 

“It was different,” she admitted as she took his hand and squeezed it. The dewy feeling of his mouth against her ear inspired an impossible argument that various sectors of her body seemed to disagree on.  _ Just back off a bit _ : said her brain.  _ Just fuck him until he can’t think straight enough to make soliloquies _ : said her belly. He moved against her as though her body were an instrument and he a talented pianist. She could feel him grow hard against her thigh.

 

“You hadn’t really been yourself until then, I think.” 

 

She nodded again, and squeezed his hand more. Had she ever felt such tightness in the pit of her stomach? She had to smirk at herself, thinking that surely this time it was not the flu coming to grip her but something else entirely. “You’re probably right.” 

 

He slipped a hand underneath the waistband of her shorts and stroked the skin that was hidden just there. Fitz smiled against the skin of her neck, unlatched from the hair elastic she was using to keep it from splaying all over.

 

“Do you remember what else I said that night?” She dropped his hand, squeezed it no longer, and was torn between squeezing her legs together to preoccupy her desire or opening them to make way for what she prayed was going to happen next. “About being gentle?”

 

“Yes,” he purred. 

 

“What was it?” She asked, only to be interrupted by her own groan at the end when his hand brushed over the crotch of her knickers. 

 

Fitz pressed a kiss to the back of her shoulder and without haste, he drug the back of his thumb over her groin. When she made another sound of approval, he patted the inside of her thigh to encourage her to move it out of the way. She obediently moved to make more room for him.

 

“You told me that I could be as gentle as I wanted to be,” he answered, “so I was.” 

 

As he moved under the next waistband, Jemma thought she might cry. It was embarrassing how much she wanted him to make love to her again, the same way he used to do it with devotion that only he was able to perform. She tasted blood and realized that she’d been biting her lip for god knows how long. She squirmed under his watch, wondering if there was a chance that he could feel the same way. As the whimper broke out of her, she felt her face grow hot. 

 

“You’re not going to ask me this time, are you?” He dipped his hand lower, all four of his fingers against her, tracing recklessly slowly. 

 

“Jesus christ, Fitz.” 

 

He laughed and his cock twitched against hip, only igniting something more within her. 

 

“I can’t think anymore. You won’t be able to drag an argument out of--ohh….” Her closed eyes flashed the color gold of deep amber and canaries, honey that is turning to mead and shiny orchestral instruments. 

 

“Jemma?”

 

She answered, still aflutter. “Yeah?” 

 

“I can’t explain how much I’ve missed you. Words don’t seem enough. They never have.” 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! Thanks so much for reaching the end with me. The next and final chapter will serve as an epilogue for these two... and several other characters. 
> 
> I'm working on something new. I hope to see you all there. <3


	23. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for hanging out with me for the past few months. You have all been so great and I have appreciated every one of your comments and kudos. I mean it, like I have looked at them over and over during bad days.

No one was more surprised when Bobbi and Hunter married in the following November than Bobbi was. She swore it happened much faster than she expected. With a grin, Bobbi also swore that she knew it would never last, but that there was something about that man that made her want to go through with it anyway. 

 

Autumn had waited until the last minute before popping out like a jack-in-the-box. The leaves in central park changed to golden yellow and Jemma planned a bachelorette party that was comprised of only three women having a gluten-free picnic lunch amongst the trees. She knew for a fact that Daisy had smuggled a kip of vodka into the celebration, but in good nature, Jemma didn’t say a thing. Even watching the dehydrating trees strewing leaves all over the drying brown grass. 

 

She left the two of them mid-way through the evening, sure that Daisy had something else planned for just the two of them, and it was likely it was something that she wouldn’t take part in. No sense in ruining Bobbi’s fun. 

 

“Afternoon,” Fitz greeted as soon as she’d shut the flat’s door behind her. From his favorite green chair by the window, he watched as she hung her belongings on the coat rack. “Missed you.”

 

She crossed to give him a kiss before lying down on the sofa and covering up with a blanket. “Missed you. I’m exhausted,” She fought through a yawn. 

 

“While you were gone,” he relayed while he folded his book closed, “I finished repairing that thing on the range and also I spoke to mum.” 

 

Jemma stretched out fully and her boyfriend grabbed her foot. Not quite a massage, but she would take it. “I hope she’s well.”

 

“Coming to visit again.”

 

“Ah.”

 

“I told her that I needed to talk to you first and ask if it was alright if she stayed here with us for a little while.” 

 

Jemma opened her eyes and leaned up to look at him. “She’s coming again? Twice in one year?” 

 

He smirked. “Yeah.”

 

Why didn’t he think that was strange? “How can she close the bakery again?” She lay back down on the couch, tracking the ceiling fan as it spun. Something else that Fitz had fixed since he moved in. 

 

“I offered her the ticket when she told me she wanted to come spend some time with us, see how the flat looks after all the work we’ve done.” He patted her leg and headed into the kitchen.

 

As the electric kettle clicked on, Jemma turned onto her side. He may need a cup, but what she really needed was a nap on the couch before it got too late. “Is she going to be here on the same weekend as the wedding?”

 

“Uh, no, the week after.” 

 

“Alright. I don’t mind if she wants to drop in for a little while. It’s all much easier with the new furniture. We can sleep on the pullout.” 

 

Fitz brought his brewing cup of tea and sat it on the end table beside the gold lamp that used to reside on his dresser at the old flat, and arranged a pillow on his lap for her to rest her head on. “She’s bringing some more things.” 

 

“Okay,” Jemma muttered, completely preoccupied with the calming drag of his fingers through her hair. He did it, often, without thinking while he read or watched football. It was her favorite way of getting to sleep, surrounded by his things and hers, surrounded by the knowledge that he was there and wasn’t going anywhere.

  
  
  


The Hunters’ ceremony was quick, and proper, and Bobbi walked down the aisle dressed in a sheath gown the color of snow. It was the cleanest thing that Fitz had ever seen, and he whispered that into Jemma’s ear as the small audience clapped. They exchanged no rings, but a coin that Bobbi tucked into a pocket in her gown. And after they wrapped things up, there was a dinner out at the diner they had begun frequenting for lunch when Jemma’s intention was to repair her relationship with her best friend. 

 

Slowly, it began anew. There was scientific discourse about the steps that would have to be taken considering the leak that had spoiled their research to the community. Steps would have to be planned and executed openly even though the research was incomplete. Once that idea was developed and partially happening, everything else fell into place. Bobbi missed going to the cinema. She missed having dessert out late, just the two of them. Shortly after Jemma’s birthday, Bobbi told her that she and Lance had decided to marry.

 

“Listen, your ceremony was great,” Mr. Coulson congratulated as he kissed the bride’s cheek in custom. “I know this isn’t the time or place for business, but I wanted to run something by you while you’re all here, together, out of the office for a change.”

 

Hunter made a face. “Honestly, mate, I’m not sure I’ve ever met you.” 

 

Coulson reached out a hand and smiled. He was never one to scowl; he smiled even when he didn’t mean to. “I’d like to think you will.”

 

The six of them huddled together, frustrating the other group of people who had just made their way to that area in the effort to congratulate Bobbi and Hunter as well.

 

“I’ve been assigned a team, and I’ve been allowed to head-hunt that team out of every department at work. Anyone I want. Sure, I could make you join, but I’d rather you want to come.” He offered, one eyebrow raised. It was an offer.

 

Fitz raised a finger as if to ask a question, but Coulson beat him to the punch. “I’d like you for that team, too, Dr. Fitz. And Lance,” he turned to face the groom, “I need someone with a good eye for bad character. The research can’t guard itself.” 

 

“Is that an offer?” Hunter asked. As he drew himself closer into the group, his voice grew more excited. 

 

“Of course it is.”

 

“I’m already on board. And I’ll just add, for those of you worried about any more potential leaks, I know a few other good people who could use a raise.” Fitz was edging his way in with the same enthusiasm of the groom, the two of them likely done being abused by another big company without the resources it took to do good work.

 

“Great. Sold. I’m going to assume the rest of you are accepting the offer. Something about weddings weakens my ego-- can’t stand the idea of you ladies kicking me when I’m down.” Coulson winked and mumbled something about running the contracts by them later, and everyone else went back to the party, with Jemma included, holding a thin glass flute of sparkling water.

* * *

 

As Imogene walked back in the flat for the second time, her jaw dropped. “Bless me,” she whispered. “Look at the thing.”

 

Jemma smiled behind her hand, pretending to cough to hide her amusement. 

 

“Leopold, you have never lived in a place so beautiful. Did the two of you hire a decorator?”

 

“No,” Fitz laughed, his teeth all showing. “It was just friends coming over. Helping out.”  

 

In truth, Bobbi had not been paid in peanuts. She was too tired for that, she said. It had taken many cups of coffee and many late nights for her to mediate between the two of them when the time finally came for Fitz to move in, but by that time, Jemma was ready to cave. Anything he wanted was granted. Industrial lighting fixtures? Sure. He wanted more green and gold, naturally? Absolutely. Toss out the old white and blue without even a drop of hesitation. It reminded her of other things, things that she had been ready to leave behind.

 

When he came to live with her, He also brought along a cabinet full of spices for the kitchen, a coffee table big enough to stow books under, and a second bead-monkey that fell into place in the bathroom cabinet beside the first. 

 

_ “There was a period in between this monkey and the last one when success had to be defined differently, sure,” he lectured as the two stood in the bathroom on the new mat and Jemma had her arms wrapped around his waist, but that doesn’t mean that you didn’t work for the first monkey, too. You should keep it to remind you, I think.” He was no expert. He had taken no classes, and neither had Bobbi on this type of thing. By all accounts, Jemma had just been lucky to get where she was without professionals, but in that moment, she felt as though she were a hundred feet tall.  _

 

“So you like it, do you, Mum?” Fitz asked as he strode in behind her, carrying the last of her things.

 

Imogene sighed and stood with her hands on her hips to take in the whole of what had been done, her son’s mother. “I especially like this wall.” She considered, and moved closer to take it in. “The entire of the room was gray, wasn’t it?” 

 

“It was. Fitz liked the white, though.” Jemma stood beside her, and Imogene wrapped an arm around her shoulders. On the wall in front of them, there were no photos. Those had been plastered all over the hallway. There were pictures of she and Fitz at the zoo on one of their first dates after Atlanta. As one neared the bedroom they shared, there were photos of them with Hunter at concerts and those of Jemma and Daisy at the next conference, just the two of them, in Washington. They peered over their shared hotel balcony, waiting with the hopes that a whale might breech or at least show itself on the horizon across the too-misty harbor. They still hoped. Despite all of the evidence that Jemma had collected, that Fitz had, there were still empty walls in the flat. They shared a favorite. The empty space on the same plane as the front door: white and clean . It reminded Jemma of something. She wasn’t sure what.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I need to add here that I've done my best while writing this to combat romanticizing alcoholism in this fic. I know that many writers do like to use addictions and illnesses in fanfic as cute and endearing quirks and they really aren't. I say this as an ACOA and as someone whose real-life friends struggle with similar issues daily.
> 
> In real life, having your friends lock you in a room to help you overcome your demons is most likely going to make no impact in the long run. Please seek professional help if you are suffering from addiction. It's wonderful to have the support of your friends and family while you become better, but it's not the same as working together with someone who has actual/professional training and credentials. If you're reading this and anything I'm saying applies to you, I sincerely wish you the best of luck. <3


End file.
